More workers strike over healthcare benefits

The United Food and Commercial Workers - among the largest in the country with 1.4 million members - says it is bracing for similar battles in other states. It began a national strike fund a year ago, and has told local organizers to build their own funds and warn workers to prepare by paying off bills and saving money. UCFW members are on strike in St. Louis and are poised to do so in Wisconsin and West Virginia.

"I hope this is over soon because it's really hurting me something terrible," says Mike Baraga, a 31-year Ralphs employee, standing for his third straight day in hot sun with a giant picket sign. Since both he and his wife work at the company, he says they can't go on much longer without paying rent. "We can't compete with Wal-Mart and Target," he says, noting that their employees often get lower wages, with fewer benefits.

If the first supermarket strike in 25 years is causing inconvenience for shoppers, the region-wide public transportation strike is causing even more palpable reaction.

"No one in my family can even get around," says Sanyika Bryant, a resident of South Central Los Angeles and a member of the Busrider's Union, a group of low-income commuters who have staged a decade-long battle with the MTA over bus availability and cost. Seventy percent of bus commuters are poor and live in the inner city.

Mr. Bryant says he has no way to get to the San Fernando Valley for classes at L.A. City College. His brother and sister have no way to get to school, and his mom can't make it to Walden Books where she works as a sales clerk.

"It's pretty much impossible to live a decent life if you are poor and are cut off from a crucial service like this," says Bryant.

Whereas the previous MTA strike centered over better pay and working conditions, this one is over health benefits.

The MTA mechanics say their union health fund is low on funds. Now they're calling on the MTA to cover escalating costs of medical care.

The MTA says the $17 million it pays into the fund is sufficient to cover the 2,000 employees and retirees.

"Union leaders basically ran the trust fund into the ground and now they want the taxpayers to bail them out," said MTA's CEO Roger Snoble in a statement.

But bus riders say the strike has been provoked by the MTA's simple greed. Some complain that the MTA spends 70 percent of its funding on transport used by six percent of commuters - those who crisscross the city from more affluent suburbs.

"Whenever they can get money by raising fares, cutting services, attacking health benefits or whatever, they do it," says Busrider Union spokesman Damon Azali.

Some experts say such disagreements between unions and employers cannot be solved from strike to strike, workplace to workplace. The healthcare issue is taking on a national prominence and may loom large in the 2004 presidential election.

"The fight over health benefits in union contracts across the country is the biggest cry yet for a larger look at legislative change at the national level," says Professor Bronfenbrenner of Cornell.

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