Grocery Store Workers Go On Hunger Strike Over Stagnant Wages

All night long, Jose Garcia performs his job while surrounded by food -- a painful bit of irony, he says.

The 52-year-old Mexican immigrant works the overnight shift cleaning floors inside a Cub Foods store in Minneapolis, Minn., a job he's mostly appreciated for the nine years he's held it down. But lately, waxing aisle after aisle filled with groceries has simply reminded him of how little he has.

Despite his long tenure with the same cleaning company, Garcia says he earns a wage of $9 an hour -- more or less the same rate he was making when he started cleaning floors back in 2002. Taking inflation into account, his salary has effectively gone down since he started working on the cleaning crew.

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Veronica Mendez, one of the organizers, said most grocery-store cleaners in the area are earning around $7.50 or $8 an hour and doing more work than they did just a few years ago.

"The reason is, these big stores are pitting the cleaning services against one another to get the lowest cost," Mendez said. "The cleaning workers at those stores are the ones who pay." With other cleaning jobs that have several layers of sub-contracting, "there are workers who end up not getting paid at all. ... Retail cleaning is in a downward spiral, and it's going from bad to worse."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/28/grocery-store-workers-hunger-minneapolis-minnesota-cub-foods_n_868195.html

Sure,

It would be better if everyone made $20 an hour or more but people will only get paid what they're willing to work for.

If he quits, I'm sure there will be 10 or 15 people willing to do his job for his pay or less.

Who's fault is this?

What I'm saying is, if they couldn't find anyone to hire at that wage, then the pay would have to go up.

If it's a job just about anyone can do, it's not going to pay very much because there are plenty of people who'll do it for that wage.

It's bad to say, but I see the point of the employer too.

If you're willing to do it for this wage, why should I give you more? And if you quit, you'll be replaced by the end of the day.

It's a catch 22.

and protected by labor laws that allowed for strikes and other forms of protest without fear of retaliation forcing employers to the negotiating table. We as a society seem to have forgotten our labor history and its important role moving the employer/employee relationship beyond the private sphere to one that warranted legal protections designed to ensure our work places met certain standards of fairness and safety. While certainly not perfect in practice, unions went a long way in improving the lives of millions of workers.

When I worked part time in a supermarket in NY, I was unionized. Yes, even for part time. This is why it is so critical we KEEP UNIONS.

...the cleaning crews aren't employees of the store, they are employees of the
cleaning service. If they went on strike the store would get a new service.

The point of a union is that the store doesn't get to make those decisions without worker input.

are bent on blaming the workers.

Did anyone not see this sentence ----

"there are workers who end up not getting paid at all. ... Retail cleaning is in a downward spiral, and it's going from bad to worse."

People say that Jose (in the story) should just take his $9.00 an hour because people will work for less. Like maybe nothing, or $1.00 an hour?

This system is exploiting workers, whether they are legal or not. Isn't that called something, I don't know, slavery, perhaps? No, not in America!

The whole industry is corrupt and exploitive, it needs to be throughly investigated, and cleaned up. i applaud these workers who are striking, I seriously hope something gets done.