UFCW Members Picket "Labor Leader of the Year"

This Friday, January 18, 2008 UFCW President Joseph Hansen will be at the San Francisco Hilton hotel to be honored as "Labor Leader of the Year". Guests will include Senator Hillary Clinton, an array of California and San Francisco officials and a variety of union leaders.

Outside the hotel, members of the UFCW will assemble a picket line. They believe that the UFCW under President Hansen is the "Labor Failure of the Year" and that the UFCW has failed to practice what it preaches.

Why the protest?

Formed in 1979 with a merger of meatcutters and retail clerks unions, the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union proposes to "...elevate the social and economic status of workers and, further, to advance the principles and practice of freedom and democracy for all". The UFCW calls itself "A Voice for Working America".

What UFCW members experience is a vast gulf between that voice and the realities of their union membership and their livliehoods, between the purpose and practice of the UFCW.

Contracts, especially in the grocery sector, have undergone a two-decade decline in value. Members have experienced an ongoing process of Local mergers into larger labor organizations that are "local" only in name and in which their voices and choices are submerged. The democratic processes of union officer elections have been actively evaded and often, when elections are held, they have been the subject of charges and investigations for unfair practices. The various legal rights of members within their union have been ignored within the UFCW.

In consequence, the UFCW has experienced a decline in its membership in recent years while the vast majority of members have opted out of even the most basic levels of union participation. Between 70% and 80% of UFCW members simply decline to vote in either officer elections or in contract ratifications.

Faced with these realities, UFCW members have begun a vigorous dislogue on common experiences and solutions, centered on the website http://www.uncharted.ca
The UFCW, in their view, needs to be restored - to the members, by the members, and for the members.