When the supermarket service workers recently went on strike against the Kroger corporation in Colorado, some people cross the picket line and shopped there anyway. I did not. The why is my column this week for The Villager:
I did not cross the picket line. I did so out of simple respect. When the commercial service workers went on strike against King Soopers and the Kroger corporation for ten days, I did not cross the line. I did not shop there. I did not interfere in or subvert these workers’ efforts to negotiate wages and working conditions with their employer. As a middle class wage earner living in suburbia, I did not presume to know their business and fully understand the challenges they face in the workplace everyday. So, I did not cross the line because I respect the working class people of the service industry.
In a recent column for the Denver Post, writer, part-time professor, and aspiring politician, Krista Kafer explained why she crossed the picket line. In her somewhat curt and straightforward manner, she said she crossed the line because she needed groceries and the labor dispute wasn’t her business. “It’s not personal,” she says. People who choose to cross picket lines do so out of one of two positions – privilege or principle. Kafer’s choice was clearly one of privilege, which she cleverly masks in principle. While Kafer argues that she crossed the line because she wasn’t a pawn in the game, she let her privileged principle blind her to the role she plays as a consumer. And, of course, she capitalized on the opportunity by crafting a column out of it. Despite claiming she had no stake in the issue, Kafer actually did take a side, supporting the Kroger corporation over the people who work the aisles.
Growing up in the river town of Alton, Illinois, outside St. Louis, I lived near three steel mills, two automotive plants, several refineries, and numerous manufacturing plants. I grew up around Owens-Illinois Glass, Alton Boxboard, Olin Brass, and numerous other factories whose collective bargaining agreements with their workers built much of the middle class in the areas around St. Louis. My father worked in labor relations for decades, albeit from the management side. But through the experience of my community and my father’s job, I learned a great deal about labor, about contract negotiations, about work stoppages, and about collective bargaining. It’s where I learned to not cross a picket line. As a point of disclosure, I should note that while I am a teacher, I am not a member of the local education association.
As a young man, I came of age during the 1980s and the Reagan Revolution, and the first political leader I supported to succeed the Gipper was New York Representative Jack Kemp, the original compassionate conservative. As a former NFL player and a resident of Buffalo, Kemp had an authentic understanding of the working class. As co-founder and president of the AFL Players Association, he had a deep understanding of labor. Kemp knew well how collective bargaining simply makes sense. Why would anyone go it alone when everyone knows there’s strength in numbers? It’s not for naught that Ben Franklin reminded the colonists, “we must all hang together or we will surely hang separately.” Collective action in pursuit of just goals is an American tradition.
I live across the street from my local King Soopers, and for twenty years I’ve shopped there, sometimes daily. My children grew up knowing the names of the produce stockers and the deli counter workers who chatted with them, often letting them sample the selections. By contrast, I suspect Krista Kafer’s experience working many years for politicians inside the DC Beltway has left her aloof to the everyday lives and working conditions of service workers. She knows little of the people she passes in the aisles. Kafer said the contract negotiation is not her fight. If so, she should have stayed out of it; instead she chose a side. She chose to interfere and subvert the service workers association’s ability to negotiate a contract.
If people like Ms. Kafer want to understand the workers she disrespected, the essential workers she dismissively walked past on their picket line, then she might consider reading some books about the history of organized labor and the challenge to create a middle class for the working class. As an English teacher, I’d recommend she check out Upton Sinclair's The Jungle or Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed. Or perhaps she could simply talk to the people she has so casually dismissed.
I respected the picket line, and I always will.
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