Grocery Execs Take Stock of Their Options
“Union Packs Unfair Punch in Grocery Strike,” by Elan Journo and Brian P. Simpson (Commentary, Jan. 29), makes an interesting point. Unfortunately, it is all too naive. How, indeed, can the companies involved in the strike be “holding on” when the union is, as they put it, crippling the employers?
One must assume that the corporations are doing just fine when, in the middle of a labor dispute, Safeway gave its executives multimillion-dollar stock bonuses (Jan. 26). Not for doing a better job or being more productive, mind you, but just so they would not leave a mismanaged company. Oh, wait, this sounds just like what the commentary accuses the unions of doing!
Blair Caugherty
Palm Desert
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Thanks to Journo and Simpson for informing us exactly what unions are all about. Just think, if we just did away with unions, the grocery stores could just go to the open labor markets and pay almost any price for labor. In fact, they should be able to do anything they want. It’s their money and, besides, there’s always someone here out of desperation who would take just about any job at any wage. Better than starving.
Medical care? C’mon, as Scrooge said, there should be some way to “decrease the surplus population.” And then, with the huge labor savings, the stores could drop prices to the floor. Vons, Albertsons and Ralphs could way undercut Wal-Mart. Of course, you would need the low prices because the “any wage goes” wouldn’t pay for much. Get these workers out of the middle class! Why should they get more than the 40 cents an hour paid to workers in some other countries? Makes you wonder why minimum wages and unions were established in the first place.
Ralph Mitchell
Monterey Park
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Are these guys Bush’s speechwriters? Journo and Simpson tell us that it could be “mutually advantageous” for grocery employees to earn $10 less per hour than the wages their union status gives them. May we hear them explain how it’s possible to live on $7 per hour with no benefits in 2004? May we hear how it’s “mutually advantageous” for top grocery store chain executives to earn millions of dollars in return for losses looking toward tens of millions of dollars?
Monroe Slavin
Encino
