UFCW Begins Picketing at Union-Free Fresh & Easy in Modesto, CA
March 25th 2011 · 6 Comments
ROSEVILLE, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– UFCW 8-Golden State President Jacques Loveall announced that Union volunteers established an informational picket line at a newly-opened Fresh & Easy store in Modesto today.
The picket line is in front of the store near the intersection of Oakdale Road and East Briggsmore Avenue. The Union continues its informational picket lines in front of Fresh & Easy stores in Bakersfield, Reedley, Fresno and other locations.
Loveall said the Union is asking the public not to shop at Fresh & Easy and to shop instead at stores such as Save Mart, Raley’s, Safeway, Food Maxx, Maxx Value, Cost Less and Rite Aid.
“Tesco, which is Fresh & Easy’s parent company in the United Kingdom, is siphoning money out of our community,” Loveall said. “We are responding to that provocation.”
“California has enough challenges without a foreign company coming in with substandard jobs that threaten good, local companies that bring value and good jobs to our community. It’s bad enough good American jobs are exported overseas at an alarming rate, now this global giant from the UK is coming to our country thinking they can take advantage of American workers on our own turf,” Loveall said.
“We will not allow that to happen,” he said.
Loveall noted that Fresh & Easy’s incursion into the United States poses a threat to Union market share and to the living standards of Union members’ wages and benefits.
“Our members are prepared to do whatever it takes to ensure that workers at Fresh & Easy have the same access to the good pay, health care, pension and job security enjoyed by Union members,” Loveall said.
via Yahoo! Finance.
Photo Credit: David Boyle
Tags: Fresh & Easy, UFCW, United Food & Commercial Workers
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Here’s a good write up about the picketing at the Modesto store: http://freshneasybuzz.blogspot.com/search/label/Sunflower%20Farmers%20Market
I work at fresh & easy and I have all that the union promises with out having to pay dues. I get great pay, health, dental, vision, and a 401k. What can the union do that fresh & easy hasn’t already done. Plus fresh & easy is bring money into the local economy. They buy from local farmers, and they are providing jobs. I just wish the unions would stop pestering me when I go to work and I wish they would stop messing with our products. I think it’s low of them to come in and load up carts with milk and ice cream then leave them at the front.
They are also picketing at the stores in Van Nuys and Northridge. What many people don’t know is that many of the people picketing are not and have never been Fresh and Easy employees. They are paid to picket against a company for whom they have never worked.
UFCW. As a loyal F&E customer, my family, friends and will continue to shop at F&E and support them in their fight again you. This is the WRONG time for unions to gain any kid of sympathy. If you don’t like what you earn, go to school or learn a skill/trade and increase your own self-worth or is your life’s goal to work a menial job for the rest of your life?
The picketers I talk to at the Reedley store are paid, not volunteers. Also, it is hard to believe anything they say because when I asked one of them (he has been working the line the longest) what his job title was he said he did not know. Work for a union and you don’t know your job title? I also asked him if any of them had ever lost a job to a worker employed through a government program and he also said yes but could not remember the name of the program. I am older than him and I do remember being replaced by a CETA working doing the Carter years. Read the history of that program and you’ll know why private enterprise is the only way to effectively create more jobs, preferably non-union because if you look where much of our federal government money is going for jobs it is the unions that are getting the payback. I’ve belonged to 3 unions, not by choice, and as Joe says, “is your life’s goal to work at a menial job for the rest of your life?” I worked and went to school, never applied for financial aid. Yes, I Shop and will continue to shop at Fresh & Easy.
Unions are good for nothing. I work at Food Maxx and if I didn’t agree to pay their $25/week I’d be fired. My hours get cut from 40/week to 24/week and their response? You’ll have to talk to the company about that. They talk a lot but do little. They don’t offer anything new. All they do is threaten you and drain your pockets. Thank you to everyone who shops at non-union stores like Fresh & Easy. Down with UFCW.