Nearly 10,000 supermarket workers are now on strike after
the company's contract didn't offer their very basic demands.
Now this is the Kroger supermarket chain.
And the work stoppage is taking place at nearly 80 King Sooper grocery
stores which are owned by Kroger's company.
And it's across the Denver metropolitan area where these strikes are taking place.
According to the Colorado Sun, 10 additional stores in Colorado Springs
could also go on strike in the coming weeks.
Now, what is taking place?
Why did they decide to strike?
Well, the workers' union, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7,
rejected the company's "best and final offer" on Tuesday,
saying the $84 billion company did not offer enough for
employees to afford basic necessities.
And I do wanna give you the statements from the union leader, Kim Cordova,
because these are, I mean, I couldn't have put this better myself.
Kim Cordova writes, King Soopers is enjoying record profits while leaving its
workers to struggle with low wages.
Grocery workers ensure that our communities have access to food, but
they cannot even afford to feed their own families.
This is grossly unfair.
She also says that the companies were thriving, but our workers didn't thrive.
Know what our workers got?
Covid, attacked, beat up, spit on, slapped, overworked.
And the company?
They did great.
They did absolutely great, sitting behind their desk doing their job by Zoom.
And I should also note that the CEO, his name is Rodney McMullen, and
we'll get back to him in a minute, is raking in quite a bit of money in terms of
his compensation package to the tune of $22 million, $22 million in one year.
Wos, what do you think?
>> Every time you go to the list of demands from one of
these strikes, it's the same basic stuff.
We need better pay to be able to pay our bills.
We need safer working conditions.
We need better health care.
Again, which Medicare for All, universal healthcare would knock that out of
freaking Kroger's list of stuff that they could deprive their employees of.
And it's just again, and the workers always saying the same thing,
you're making record profits.
You can't tell me, you can't,
this is some purse tightening measure or we're tightening the belts or
any other euphemism that people use when they wanna be cheap.
You're making the money and part of how you
do that is our toil, give us our fair share.
Every single time, it's the same thing.
These people are making record profits.
That's what I love is that the workers are awakening to the fact that they're being
screwed by these people.
They're giving blood, sweat and tears.
You asking people to put their mask on, they're cursing at you,
threatening bodily harm of you.
And even in, forget those moments, anytime I go to a supermarket,
I see the tender way that they deal with seniors and
helping them navigate the supermarket and getting this stuff.
These people are doing incredible work, right?
The idea that the company that they worked for could be making records,
billions in profits and can't compensate these people fairly for
the incredible jobs that they're doing in incredibly harrowing conditions.
It's disgusting.
But again, it's not like they're gonna wake up one day and
be like, I got all this money.
Let me go throw some of this out to the people, that never happens.
It only happens by force.
It only happens by labor agitation, labor militancy and strike these cats, man.
>> That's exactly right.
Because what the executives of any major corporation,
they have a fiduciary responsibility to do what?
To- >> Maximize profits.
>> For their shareholders.
That's it, that's all it is.
And the most expensive cost within any business is labor.
And that's where labor gets attacked the most.
So they're never going to, out of the kindness of their own hearts,
especially when we're talking about major corporations, look out for
their employees.
They're always looking for
ways to cut down on what they're paying their employees.
And by the way, what I found fascinating, anytime one of these stories pops up,
I always get real excited to do some research on the CEO.
Cuz I'm always curious about what kind of interviews the CEO has done on CNBC.
CNBC is a gold mine.
And in September of 2021, the CEO of Kroger,
his name's Rodney McMullen, went on to talk about the troubles that
they've been facing in terms of finding employees to work for them.
Really, you're having a hard time?
Let's watch.
>> We have about 20,000 openings right now.
We're aggressively hiring anywhere we can.
And one of the biggest constraints we have right now is finding talented people and
we've continued to increase wages.
We've been able to do that.
It's part of the long-term plan where over the last three years,
we've increased wages by $850 million a year.
We are increasing another 350 this year.
And through work process changes and using technology,
we're able to make everybody a little bit more productive.
And that's really how we're financing those increase in wages.
>> No, I mean, it's right in your faces.
I love how immediately they go to a split screen of how Kroger is
performing in the stock market, right?
It's amazing, but wow, you're looking for 20,000 workers.
And I love how he tried to spin it as we're giving out raises.
We're treating our workers real well.
Well, he's lying and I can say he's lying because I have receipts.
I have the actual details of what workers are dealing with as they work at
Kroger specifically, Kroger-owned supermarket stores.
And they have many under different names.
So there was a recent study and the study specifically looked into the economic
situation for these supermarket workers and here's what they found.
Research firm Economic Roundtable released a report showing
the economic realities facing workers at the chain who earn
an average of $29,655 per year for 30-hour work weeks.
So they intentionally avoid giving them full-time jobs so
they can essentially skirt having to pay for certain benefits and things like that.
The firm surveyed 10,000 workers in Colorado, California, and Washington and
found that 70%, a whopping 70% of respondents work only part time,
with many working erratic schedules.
So they can't have a second job even if they want it, said Peter Dreier,
who is a professor at Occidental College who worked on the report.
And also, two-thirds of the respondents said that they couldn't
afford basic monthly expenses, 39 couldn't afford groceries,
and 14% said that they had experienced homelessness in the past year.
Imagine that, imagine working 30 hours a week, I'm assuming that they would
like full-time shifts, but they're not given full time shifts.
They're given erratic schedules so they can't get a second job if they wanted to.
And as a result of all the work that they're doing,
14% of these workers are homeless.
They're homeless.
And this guy, the CEO goes on CNBC,
he's like we got 20,000 people we need to hire and we're doing aggressive hiring.
We're looking for talented people.
Get out of here.
You know what you need to do to hire people.
You know what to do to attract people.
And as Jonah Furman, great labor reporter,
I love promoting his work, mentioned on Twitter.
Assuming this 14% holds across the whole Kroger Kroger workforce,
that's around 65,000 people working at the fourth-largest private employer
in the United States, ranked 17% on the Fortune 500, who have been
homeless while keeping the country's grocery stores running, in a pandemic.
That's the reality of what's happening with workers.
So when you hear about the great resignation and all that, understand
what's really driving that and I love that workers are actually organizing.
I love that unions are providing the protection that these workers
need in order to do this strike and demand better working conditions and
better pay, better health benefits.
That's another one of their demands.
The company can clearly afford it, but the company is not gonna give it to
them unless they fight for it and they're fighting.
>> Yeah, man, seeing that laid out the way that it was in that tweet
when you just again, consider the largest of that corporation.
And to think that there are people who are working for
them that can't afford to have a roof over their head.
And people are struggling with monthly expenses, probably stuff like what?
And it all circles back to the things that we're talking about, right,
when it comes to child tax credit, paid sick leave, etc, etc.
Medicare for All, its like people can't afford daycare.
People can't afford rent.
People can't afford the basic necessities.
They can't afford to get really sick.
They can't afford to like who knows?
God forbid, they break a bone.
They can't afford to have that heal at a hospital or something like that or
get it worked on, go to therapy, etc, etc.
People can't afford these basic needs.
And it's because our overlords are hoarding all of our resources.
>> And I wanna end this segment by just encouraging you guys to check out
Labor Notes.
That's where Jonah Furman writes.
And for me personally,
keeping up with these stories has kind of helped me remain sane.
I know we get a lot of our viewers writing in and saying like, thank you, TYT.
You help us keep our sanity.
Labor Notes and other publications like it helped me
keep my sanity because you need something inspiring to look to.
It's not just about finding like-minded individuals.
It's about seeing people actually making moves and really fighting for change.
And for the first time in a long time in this country,
you're seeing people work together.
They're just bypassing the ineffectiveness in Congress or
even in their local governments to demand better conditions for
themselves in their immediate environment.
So definitely check out the work and follow Jonah Furman over at Twitter.