There's a real, honest-to-god job action going on up my way, and it seems to be working the way such things are supposed to work. Stop 'n Shop—the supermarket chain specifically immortalized in the Official Rock Song of the Commonwealth (God save it!)—tried to jack around with the benefit packages it allowed its employees and, a week ago, 31,000 workers walked off the job and threw up picket lines that, by and large, have been honored by other unions and by customers as well. From the Boston Globe:

The nearly week-old strike by 31,000 unionized Stop & Shop workers is clearly having an impact, with the union contending that at least several dozen of 240 stores in three states are closed, and many shoppers are staying away from those that are still open. “In nearly 30 years, we haven’t seen a strike as effective and devastating as this one,” said Burt P. Flickinger III, managing director of Strategic Resource Group, a retail consulting firm that has evaluated grocery store strikes for three decades...Inside stores, shortages are evident. Meat and produce are rapidly disappearing from shelves, and aren’t being replaced because truck drivers in the Teamsters union are refusing to cross the picket line. Workers are blocking other trucks from making deliveries.

Stop & Shop said it is also offering wage increases and increased pension contributions for current workers. Average hourly pay is $21.30, according to Stop & Shop, with front-end clerks averaging $15.90, while other line workers make in the $18-$20 range. But the union has called the store’s proposals “smoke and mirrors” that would hurt both current employees and new hires. The company’s proposal would cost a full-time employee an additional $893 in weekly health care premiums over three years, the union said, reduce pension benefits for many part-timers and new hires, remove 1,000 employees’ spouses off health insurance, and eliminate time-and-a-half pay on Sundays and holidays for new part-timers.

The sympathetic action by the Teamsters is a critical moment here. Nothing is delivered without those guys. Moreover, Senator Professor Warren showed up on one of the picket lines last week and, it is said, Joe Biden is due to come to town. Helluva lot more sense than doing town halls on Fox News.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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