More workers strike over healthcare benefits

Chai Laplander is having a challenging day.

After quadrupling her usual commute time from the distant suburb of Santa Clarita - thanks to a strike by bus mechanics - the nonunion grocery worker had to cross a line of angry picketers outside the local Ralph's grocery where unions are staging the region's first supermarket strike in 25 years.

As she scans paper towels and produce in a checkout lane, she offers a resigned shrug. "Life here does seem to be getting more complicated ... again," she says.

It's not the first time that 450,000 L.A. commuters such as Ms. Laplander have found themselves thumbing rides or relying on taxis and car pools. When employees of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) began striking Tuesday, clogged freeways stood as still as broken conveyor belts, bringing back memories of a similar strike three years ago. That one lasted over a month.

But it's a concurrent strike by 859 supermarket grocery clerks in Southern California that has compounded the frustration of carrying out even the simplest of daily chores in L.A. Suddenly, the city seems like a model of Soviet inefficiency.

Though coincidental in timing, the two strikes aren't unrelated. Both unions are trying to renegotiate contracts that will boost medical benefits and cover soaring health-insurance costs. The two high-profile strikes follow dozens of recent union disputes in California and elsewhere over health benefits, an issue that may continue to plague contract negotiations coast-to-coast until the larger issue of health costs is addressed.

"We have a healthcare crisis in this country and that has spilled over into every union bargaining negotiation in the country," says Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of Labor Education Research at Cornell University. "Employers are feeling the pressure to cut costs and unions are trying to hold firm not just on behalf of organized workers but unorganized ones as well."

In the case of Ralphs, Vons, Pavilions, and Albertson's supermarkets, negotiators told unionists that they must cut benefits to better compete with discount stores like Target and Wal-Mart. Those superstores, which carry everything from lawn mowers to lingerie, are increasingly stocking food and grocery items, too. Such 'one stop shop' club stores - many of them staffed by nonunionized workers - have changed the way many people shop, making it difficult for traditional supermarkets to compete. Many of them are keen to keep a lid on labor costs to remain solvent. That's difficult at a time when average health insurance premiums have risen 14 percent this year, the third year in a row of double-digit growth.

The supermarket strike here, which began Sunday after contract negotiations failed to agree on reduced benefits for workers and wages for new hires, mirrors a similar grocery-worker strike at Kroger stores in Ohio, Virginia, and Kentucky.

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