While a private-equity firm is buying Safeway for $9 billion, 1 in 3 grocery workers is on some form of public assistance. While grocery chains are cash machines for investors, nearly 1 in 5 workers has cut back on meals because he or she couldnt afford to buy food. Those are some of the results from one of the largest surveys of Californias 383,900-member grocery workforce, scheduled to be released Monday. Conducted by the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley and UC Davis Professor Chris Benner, the study, based on interviews with 925 grocery workers statewide, shows how much has changed in an industry that long promised stable, middle-class jobs. These days, the 124-page report found, workers who sell food in California are almost twice as likely as the general population to not be able to afford to eat the food they sell. This new generation of low-wage grocery workers uses $662 million worth of public assistance benefits annually, according to the report. A generation ago, these were entry-level jobs where you could work your way up, said Jim Araby, executive director of the United Food and Commercial Workers Western States Council in Oakland, which has 160,000 members in California and commissioned the study. But these days, peoples ability to do that is shrinking. Now, Araby said, he is seeing more grocery workers like Joanna Lopez. She is a 26-year-old single mother of two who has worked for three years at Walmart, which has roughly 3 percent of Californias grocery business. Food stamps Though the Hayward resident has worked in the grocery section for a year, she receives food stamps. At least once a month, she goes to a food bank because she cant cover expenses with her wages of $9.20 an hour. I try not to cut back on food for my kids, Lopez said. If I have to, I let the phone get cut off. Or I dont put gas in my car. Sometimes, to save gas money, she asks her dad, a retired truck driver, or her mom, who works in a nearby sugar warehouse, for a ride to work. Lopez couldnt survive if she didnt live with her parents, who care for her children while she works. She said her childrens father is not in the picture. With the help of a federal education grant, she is taking animation classes at Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She said she dreams of someday working at Pixar or Disney. Perhaps in an earlier era, Lopez could have envisioned a lifelong career path in the grocery business. But now, because of increasing competition from big-box stores like Target and Walmart and nonunion ethnic markets like El Super, wages have fallen and the average worker remains at his current job for 1 3/4 years, according to the study. From 2000 to 2012, the study found that the median wage at a union grocery store decreased from $19.38 to $15.17 an hour. Roughly 1 in 4 of Californias grocery workers belongs to a union. Often, union leader Araby said, during contract negotiations, retailers will point to market pressure from big-box stores, which can sell food at lower prices because they dont pay as well. But Saru Jayaraman, director of the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley and a primary author of the report, said that pressure is overblown. Walmart and Target have just slivers of Californias grocery market, but other companies look at that (low-cost) model and use it as an excuse in bargaining to drive down wages, Jayaraman said.
Posted on: Tue, 10 Jun 2014 11:43:57 +0000
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