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# Venice Unions’ days are numbered
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/venice-unions-days-are-numbered-editor/
- Published: 2004-03-08T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T03:56:47.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Venice, #archive-import

*By Derek Loughran Santa Monica*

In John Wood’s March 3 article regarding the end of the grocery workers strike Richard Cowan, the secretary and treasurer for the UFCW, states workers who broke the picket line “likely will be hired back at their old wages.” Richard Cowan should not allow anyone back into the union at their previous seniority level that broke the picket line. Those workers should now be categorized as new hires at the new, lower pay scale and reduced benefit package. Anything less is a slap in the face to every union worker that braved nearly five months on the picket lines to protect their wage scale and health benefits from the soulless corporate “Wal-Mart-izing” of the grocery industry.

Your writer also quoted cashier Gerren Evanson, who quit the union and crossed the picket line claiming he “couldn’t afford not to work,” and now was concerned about his future. Well, poor Mr. Evanson is in no position to whine about things. Disloyal actions like his prolonged the dispute and damaged many union workers’ lives who also “couldn’t afford not to work.” Families were split up when workers sent children to live with relatives, some people lost homes, many lost apartments, cars and health care. In my opinion, if Evanson can face his fellow workers after stabbing them in the back, he has no shame, and he certainly has no claim to the benefits he walked away from when he crossed the picket line.

Your writer ended the article with a quote by Randy Babb, who stated “we got away with it for a long time,” regarding the decent wage scale and health benefit package of union grocery workers. Mr. Babb, you didn’t “get away” with anything. The modest middle class wages (most top tier, full time grocery workers’ net incomes are in the $30, 000 per year range) and health benefits were the result of decades of collective bargaining. Your union, in negotiations for your health care, conceded wage increases and other benefits over the years to get a decent health package for its members. If anyone “got away” with anything it was the grocery chains that propagated the impression that retail grocery clerks were coddled, overpaid and not deserving of the wages and benefits that they’d worked for.

We are witnessing an end of an era of American history. At one time nearly 30 percent of American workers were unionized. Now it’s down to approximately 11 percent. The 40-hour work week, paid overtime, health care, pensions and worker safety protections were not benevolently bestowed on the American worker by corporate owners. On the contrary, workers endured firings, lockouts, beatings and killings by hired thugs (and even police) to prevent unions from forming in the early and middle decades of the 20th century. Every worker benefit and protection of the young and evidently ignorant Mr. Evanson enjoyed as an employee of Von’s was earned by the blood, sweat and tears of prior generations of Americans fighting for justice and the right to raise their families with dignity and decent wages.

A union grocery clerk (which I was at one time) is one of the last few jobs in retail that provided a somewhat middle class income. I am angry and saddened that the grocery chains have pretty much succeeded in undermining the union. The two-tiered wage system now in place will cause rancor and resentment between long term employees and the new ones. In 20 years, there will be no difference between a grocery clerk job and a burger flipper at McDonald’s.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 8, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/030804.pdf?ref=smdp.com)