Labor & Employment Law

Warehouse Workers on 60-Mile March for Justice

By Mike Hall

After 12 weeks of walking picket lines, striking warehouse workers at Shaw’s Supermarkets are taking their fight for justice on a 60-mile march from their warehouse in Methuen, Mass., to a rally at the state House in Boston.

The workers, members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 791, began their march yesterday and will reach the state House on Thursday. They patterned their march after the farm worker and civil rights marches of the 1960s and, along the way, will reach out to build public and political support and stage rallies at several Shaw’s markets.

Russ Davis, executive director of Massachusetts Jobs with Justice (JWJ), which is partnering with the union for the march, says, “We want the entire community to stand up and tell Shaw’s to do the right thing.”

The Massachusetts AFL-CIO and the Greater Boston Labor Council are backing the Shaw’s workers fight for fairness.

The 310 workers began their strike March 7 after they overwhelmingly rejected a contract that drastically slashed their health care benefits. The company’s latest offer, says the union, includes severe wage cuts, takes away the workers’ health care plan, eliminates the pension plan for new employees and also contains measures that would result in the loss of jobs.

Earlier this month, Local 791 filed an unfair labor practice against Shaw’s with the National Labor Relations Board. Union spokesmen Peter Derouen said the latest offer

is incredibly outrageous. The proposal continues this bad faith bargaining and kicks it up a notch, making the company’s real intentions?to punish employees for exercising their right to strike and to bust the union?even more obvious.

About a dozen union members will walk the entire distance, while others will join for parts of the march. Mike Upton, 56, is taking part, and he told the Boston Globe:

I don’t know if this old body can withstand that. I’m willing to walk 60 miles to prove a point….Will they be bringing me to the hospital? That’s a maybe.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on May 24, 2010 (boomark / email).