Unions Need to Accept New Reality

“Strike’s Strategy Is on the Line” (Dec. 16) reports that labor leaders from across the country are meeting in Los Angeles to figure out a “winning strategy” in the grocery workers’ strike. Among the options on the table: Get more militant and use the workers’ pension money as leverage.

How about this option? Open your eyes, face reality, and tell rank-and-file union members the truth!

Labor leaders are taking their members down the path to ruin. They need to accept the economic reality that in California’s fiercely competitive economic environment, grocers can no longer compete under the old way of doing things. It is reported that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is moving into California and paying workers much less than unionized workers, around $8 an hour. The unions are demanding nearly double that with fully paid health benefits. Something has to give.

It’s time for both parties to stop posturing and to sit down to seriously negotiate and compromise.

Union leaders need to retool and think of new ways of solving the problem, much in the way businesses do when they are faced with a problem.

Instead of searching for a militant, strong-arm strategy to pressure employers, union leaders need to be creative and think of ways to restructure compensation and benefits so that California grocers can continue to keep their doors open and offer food products we all depend on, and which keep their workers employed.

Increasing the pressure is not the solution. Creative thinking and compromise are.

R. Alan Smith

Glendora