Fry's, Safeway gird for strike
I saw this through Kevin at The Smallest Minority, but WifeofAzlib mentioned it last night too.
First of all, being a grocery store clerk isn't exactly skilled labor. As an airline pilot, I know (believe?) that if I ever were to go out on strike, that my company would have some difficulty in replacing me. But a grocery store clerk just runs your items across the scanner. Many grocery stores have installed those self-check-out lanes where you do this yourself. The decision to go out on strike has to be made with an assessment of how easy it is for the company to replace the striking workers.
And that brings me to this point: Unemployment.
None of the charts here are happy charts, but if you're going out on strike in Arizona, you might want to keep these two in mind....
If you're thinking of going out on strike, you had better be thinking of the other Arizona folks who are out of work. You're saying that you're willing to walk off your job for a better whatever-it-is-you're-striking-about, but you ought to remember the folks who are out there who are perhaps getting a little hungry.
And walking off your job now, means you're out of work too. While the grocery-store unions are certainly figuring that the holidays are the right time to have their workers go on strike, the union-members ought to consider that they're about to be unemployed over the holidays too.
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