Stop and Shop Workers Strike for Sustainable Jobs

Stop and Shop workers striking right now all over New England, we salute you, and say solidarity now and for as long as it takes.

Bosses cause strikes, not workers.  Profits cause strikes, not workers’ greed.  

The corporate spin-doctors are already at it. They try to paint workers who are struggling to survive on crap wages as unreasonable and hurting customers.

    Stop & Shop spokeswoman Jennifer Brogan said that “we are disappointed that the UFCW chose to order a work stoppage in an attempt to disrupt service at our stores.”

    That’s right Jennifer, workers are striking because they want to hurt the customers that they interact with everyday while you drink latte’s in the corporate PR suite. Does it get any worse than a corporate PR stooge………OMG

    Meanwhile in reality, we learn that according to a representative for the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), the company has proposed “drastic and unreasonable” cuts to workers’ health care benefits and take-home pay and increase to their health care costs.  They also want to take away premium pay on Sunday—something that many food service workers rely on to make ends meet.

    Nancy Peska, who has worked at Stop and Shop for 39 years said, “This is a tough day for me because I love my job, but they want to double what we pay in health insurance premiums and co-pays. And they won’t take that off the table.”

    And Peska is not just worried about herself,

    “I’m able to make a comfortable living, but I’m not getting rich,” she said. “I want the younger people I work with to be able to have that.”

    It’s not the workers who are greedy. It’s the bosses. Stop and Shop is owned by Dutch-Belgian conglomerate Ahold Delhaize. Stop and Shop raked in $2 billion in profit last year and got a US tax cut of $225 million in 2017.  The company is claiming that the attack on workers’ wages and benefits is necessary, but they refuse to provide any financial information to prove it.  We’re supposed to believe them and that Trump pays his taxes too. Nope, we ain’t falling for that malarkey.

Workers strike to fight for their livelihoods and to try and protect their family’s future. Bosses force workers to strike to increase profits and the value of their stock options.  We know which side we’re on, how about you?