Union Rallies At Hammonton Wal-Mart, Alleges Company Costing Taxpayers

Press of Atlantic City, March 23, 2007

Members of UFCW Local 152 are part of a series of protests across the country.

A union that represents workers at major supermarket chains in the area rallied outside a Hammonton Wal-Mart on Thursday, demanding that America's largest corporation pay its workers higher wages and offer more adequate health care and job stability.

It was a scene that played out across the country Thursday as part of a national campaign called Wake Up Wal-Mart. It involved activists who are pressuring Wal-Mart to change what they perceive as harmful practices to workers and communities. The United Food & Commercial Workers Union, which represents workers at local supermarkets such as ShopRite, Pathmark and Super Fresh, insists it isn't trying to unionize Wal-Mart workers, but rather encourage them to hold their employers more accountable.

The purpose of the protest, they said, was to disseminate public information about the company's practices. The union says that Wal-Mart is the eighth-largest employer in the state and almost half of its workers are costing taxpayers by receiving health care that is subsidized by the state.

Members of UFCW Local 152 gathered first in the Super Fresh parking lot next door to Wal-Mart - Super Fresh employees are represented by Local 152 - before moving to Wal-Mart's parking lot. Their message to consumers: Wal-Mart may seem like the cheapest choice upfront, but the costs come back to you in higher taxes - up to $420,000 annually for some communities.

They handed out fliers quietly for about 30 minutes before a manager asked them to leave. Shortly thereafter, police reinforced the message.

Wal-Mart workers inside were reluctant to talk and most were not even aware of the union members' presence outside. Several said they were happy with Wal-Mart's wages and benefits, although one employee said workers were scared to even mention unions for fear of being fired.

"They've been wanting to get a union in here for a long time" by catching people as they come in and out of work, said Fatty Friia, a sales associate in the electronics department.

Local 152 recently moved its operations to Hammonton from Cherry Hill. It represents 16,000 workers in the region.

Union organizer Gerald Chudoff said the UFCW did not oppose all nonunion retailers, citing Wegman's as a nonunion supermarket that offers employees fair wages and benefits. "It's about getting them a better quality of life," Chudoff said. The UFCW is trying to organize workers at Safeway subsidiary Genuardi's Family Markets, even after the management there has asked union members to leave the property several times.

Chudoff said that retailers such as Wal-Mart and Genuardi's not only negatively affect taxpayers, communities and workers, but also make it harder for supermarket chains that allow their workers to be unionized to retain a decent market share, because they don't have to spend as much on them.

Ninety-six percent of all supermarkets in New Jersey are unionized, according to a 2004 report on the industry's impact on the state by Rutgers University's Department of Labor Studies and Employment Relations.

Super Fresh's parent company, Montvale-based Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, purchased rival Pathmark Stores for $1.3 billion earlier this month. It was the latest acquisition in the wave of consolidation affecting Northeast supermarket companies, with more than twice the number of supermarket companies completing mergers and acquisitions last year than in 2005, according to a February report from the Food Institute in Elmwood Park. Chudoff said that such consolidation is "good because parent companies will have stronger buying power to go against big-box retailers," which don't take adequate care of their workers. Wal-Mart is destabilizing the industry, Chudoff said.

Last year Wal-Mart earned profits of $11.2 billion.

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