My mother likes to say, "Don’t borrow trouble." There’s plenty to worry about without fretting over what may not happen. But potential trouble sometimes stares you in the face.
Monday, I found myself staring back. The sign of trouble was taped to the door of an Albertsons store in Marysville. "Due to a possible labor dispute, Albertsons is now accepting applications for temporary replacement workers," it said.
I lose my appetite at the thought of crossing a picket line to buy groceries. But with two sons at home, one of them a teenage bottomless pit, I can’t let the cupboard go bare.
It was hard to miss ads in The Herald and other newspapers last week by Safeway, QFC and Fred Meyer seeking workers in the event of a strike or lockout.
A three-year contract expires Sunday covering about 17,000 grocery workers and meat cutters in the United Food &Commercial Workers Local 1105 in Snohomish, King and Pierce counties.
Melinda Merrill, a spokeswoman for the Allied Employers group representing the grocery chains in negotiations, said in an Associated Press report Friday that the ads don’t mean talks have broken down. Employers now paying 100 percent of health benefits want to pay 80 percent, with workers paying the rest, the report said. There are wage issues, too.
The talks involve Safeway, Albertsons and Kroger Co., owner of QFC and Fred Meyer, but will affect workers at other chains who will keep working but will end up with the contract emerging from the big chains’ negotiations.
Outside the Marysville Albertsons, shoppers were talking about what they plan to do in the face of a picket line.
"I wouldn’t cross it," Judy Henry of Marysville said. "I have started stocking up, and I’ll go to little stores for things like milk and bread."
Carolyn Keith said she wouldn’t have much choice but to shop at the affected stores, "but I probably won’t go as much. I’ll curtail my everyday trips to the supermarket."
Raised in a union family, the Marysville woman said she has two cousins who are grocery checkers, one at Safeway and the other at Albertsons. "I don’t like to cross a picket line," she said.
That’s not the case for Ray Hamar of Marysville. "I wouldn’t have a hard time," said Hamar, adding he was "totally opposed to the teachers strike" last fall in Marysville.
"This is a time when unions have to back up and recognize that the whole country has economic problems," Hamar said.
Tammy Shimkus, a former Safeway worker, is a staunch union backer. She worries that what happened in a recent four-month strike by grocery workers in California will be replayed here. Employees there now bear higher health care costs, and new hires earn less under a two-tier wage system.
"I can’t believe we’re allowing unions to be broken; it’s a bad thing. People are going to lose a lot — health coverage, paid days off, sick leave," said Shimkus, who lives near Marysville. "They’re trying to throw us back to the 1920s, and there’s Wal-Mart, of course."
There is Wal-Mart, which reminds me, I need a plan. Where will I get groceries if replacement workers are staffing my usual stores?
The Wal-Mart Supercenter on the Tulalip Reservation west of Marysville opens its supermarket on May 26. It’s nonunion, like every Wal-Mart in the country. Some critics say Wal-Mart holds wages down elsewhere and drives smaller retailers out of business. I’m not a Wal-Mart fan, but some who find crossing a picket line distasteful may feel comfortable there.
Another alternative is Costco. No union there, either. But it’s a bit of an ordeal to navigate Costco for just a few groceries.
There are smaller independent grocery stores without union workers, the Granite Falls Red Apple Market among them. And Trader Joe’s is a nonunion company.
Haggen Food &Pharmacy and Top Food &Drug have union workers but aren’t part of the "big four" negotiating, Haggen spokeswoman Becky Skaggs said. "If there was a lockout similar to California, they would lock out their employees but we would not," she said of Safeway, Albertsons, QFC and Fred Meyer.
Shimkus is stocking up and says she’ll shop at farmers markets.
At Country Farms, a fresh produce business on Broadway in Everett, owner Rod Waters said a strike could boost his trade, but he doubts most shoppers will stay away from the big stores for long.
"They’re not hungry yet," Waters said of folks planning not to cross picket lines.
I’m vowing not to get that hungry.
Columnist Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460 or muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com.
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