October 27, 2009 05:12 PM UTC

"Committing Journalism" At The Denver Post

• 9 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

Chuck Plunkett of the Denver Post editorial board responds to criticism of yesterday’s hilariously slanted business page story about the impending strike/lockout affecting local grocery workers, in particular efforts by local groups to help sympathetic customers avoid picket lines:

So it is screwy, this campaign by ProgressNow Colorado to create an interactive Internet map to help progressives find a NON-union grocery to shop in.

I was left scratching my head last weekend, when the first of the e-mails started.

ProgressNow talked up its map with Yes-We-Can verve about sticking it to the corporate tightwads at King Soopers, City Market, Albertsons and Safeway stores, where thousands of union workers are toiling without a contract.

As The Post’s David Migoya points out today, the liberal advocacy group, which is pro-union, is directing shoppers to non-union shops like Target, Costco and Whole Foods in the event of a strike or lockout at the union stores…this map business appears a strange new tactic, and Migoya has committed journalism in explaining why the ProgressNow alternative may backfire for the union workers it hopes to protect…

“‘Competitors are the only ones to win in that strategy,'” Andrew Wolf, an industry analyst, told Migoya.

The reporter points to a strike in Southern California involving the UFCW in 2004 after a four-and-a-half-month standoff cost the grocery chain $2 billion.

Wolf said that it took months before the companies started to show a profit again. (And there had been no fancy interactive Internet maps available in that standoff.)

Just so we’re all on the same page, it is very difficult to employ workers if your company isn’t making a profit…

Oh crap, we suppose we’d better just shut the hell up about the whole thing then. After all, that’s what happened in California in 2004, right? Because Kroger lost billions in the strike there, the whole thing “backfired” and the grocery workers lost their jobs–right? Isn’t that what happened? Doesn’t Migoya’s (and Plunkett’s) “journalism” pretty much directly imply that?

Wait, you mean that’s not what happened?

Because that’s not what this 2004 press release from the California UFCW says:

UFCW members in Southern California voted 86 percent to ratify a new agreement affecting 70,000 grocery workers at almost 900 stores, with three supermarket companies, Safeway, Kroger and Albertsons, on February 26, 2004.

After 20 weeks without pay checks, workers won their fight to protect affordable health care, their pensions and job security. The companies demanded separate health and pension plans for current and future employees and then under-fund both groups, effectively eliminating affordable health care and retirement security for workers.

Workers stuck together and won:

• Affordable health care benefits for new and current workers with no weekly premiums in the first two years, and nominal, only if needed, in the third year.
• Employer contributions of nearly $190 million to re-build the health plan reserves.
• A combined pension fund for new hires and current employees – ensuring a secure pension fund in the future.
• A payment averaging about $500 in the first and third years of the contract.

Standing up for affordable health care, these workers put health care on the national agenda in the United States. They sent a message to employers everywhere that attempts to eliminate health care benefits will come at a high price. The strike also raised the alarm for national health care reform…

And that’s not what this contemporary news article says:

Southern California grocery workers ratified a contract on Sunday, bringing to an end the longest-running grocery strike in U.S history, involving a walkout and/or lockout of more than 60,000 workers.

The 70,000 members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, employed by Kroger Co., Alberston’s and Safeway in Southern California, approved, by a margin of 86 percent, a three-year agreement accepting lower pay for new-hires, while retaining the pay of existing workers and making adjustments in worker contributions to health benefits.

Under the proposed contract, a currently employed food clerk could continue to be paid as much as $17.90 an hour, while a new-hire would be paid a maximum of $15.10 an hour. The latter amount is still higher than the pay target the grocers had hoped for, which is the same $13.75 an hour that Wal-Mart is paying some of its food clerks in nearby Las Vegas. [Pols emphasis]

And you know what? We’ve been to California recently, and there are still Vons, Ralphs, and Albertsons’ stores in every neighborhood. With UFCW workers staffing them. And even though Wal-Mart has a solid presence in California, right alongside Super Target and other discounters with grocery departments…Kroger’s profits are still going up.

So with all that in mind, what do you think that, to borrow Plunkett’s wording, the Denver Post “committed” with this story yesterday? We’ve got a theory and, um, it doesn’t involve “journalism.”