When Caine Levine did his taxes this year, he was pleasantly surprised by the big return he had coming from the IRS. The reason?
As a full-time employee in the meat and deli department of an Albertsons supermarket in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles, he brought home $250 a week. So the 33-year-old breadwinner's one-child family fell below the government's poverty line.
"They really do need to eliminate the two-tier system," Levine said, "so that everybody can have a quality job in the workplace, and so customers can get equal service."
The grocery store worker was the last to speak at a March 21 press conference in city hall, where a report by a blue ribbon commission on the Los Angeles grocery industry and community health was released.
The commission - made up of public health experts, educators and business, community and religious leaders - called for an end to the controversial double-standard system of employment by the industry in Southern California as well as the "second-class treatment" of low-income and minority communities by three major supermarket chains: Safeway Inc., Kroger Co. and Supervalu Inc.
"There are a growing number of grocery store employees who are what we call 'second-tier' workers, who have come now to be treated as second-class citizens in our community," said Rabbi Mark Diamond, executive vice president of the Southern California Board of Rabbis and co-chair of the Commission on the Los Angeles Grocery Industry and Community Health. "They endure lower wages, much lower benefits, much much longer waits for health care coverage than their coworkers who were hired before the union contract signed in 2004.
"Similarly, and equally shocking to the members of the commission, residents of minority and low-income communities in Los Angeles lack access to quality grocery stores stocking fresh produce and other basic food items. They, too, are now treated as second-class citizens, and we were shocked and distressed at their testimony."
Critical crossroads
Rabbi Diamond pointed out that supermarket chains in Southern California were at a critical crossroads. With contract negotiations currently ongoing between the parent companies of Albertsons, Ralphs and Vons and the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, the outcome could fix the fate of grocery workers for many years.
After a four-month strike and lockout starting in October 2003, the union agreed to concessions the grocery industry demanded to compete with nonunion mega-stores like Wal-Mart. A two-tier system was established, with veteran workers keeping their relatively high hourly wages and most of their health benefits, while new employees would start at just above minimum wage and wait up to three years to qualify for health benefits.
Former California assemblymember Jackie Goldberg, also on the commission, reported that the industry's two-tier system didn't exist in many other parts of the state, including Sacramento, San Francisco and Oakland.
"When the grocery industry tells me they can't afford to pay all their employees the same wages, they mean only in Southern California," she said. "And the reason they think they can get away with it here is because they think this is the home of cheap labor, and why shouldn't they get cheap labor like other people get cheap labor?
"Well, the difference is the grocery industry is a part of the community," she added. "It's the backbone of the community. We're not accepting of the notion that you can go and have all of the new employees in this second tier with only seven percent having health benefits. And in Southern California, we went from having 94 percent of grocery store employees with health benefits to 54 percent in less than three years."
The result is that more and more grocery workers are relying on emergency rooms for health care, Goldberg noted. She said Los Angeles supermarkets were quickly becoming "'Wal-Martized' at a time of record industry profits and salaries for top executives."
"Grocery markets that make money every year in profits should - must - share some of that with the people who are generating those profits, and that's the employees," she declared.
Broken promises
Another member of the commission, the Rev. Norman Johnson of the First New Christian Fellowship Baptist Church, said business leaders had broken promises made following the civil uprisings of 1965 and '92 in Los Angeles. He said Rebuild LA, the organization formed immediately after the April 1992 riots, had gotten commitments from Vons, Ralphs, Food for Less and Smart and Final to construct as many as 32 supermarkets in underserved locales.
But the clergyman pointed out that the persistence of red-lining, industry consolidation and other reasons have resulted in only one new store actually being built. "The bottom line is that residents of Los Angeles low-income communities still face unacceptable options," he said. "They either have to travel long distances for healthy food or make do with inferior markets and, most galling, fast-food options.
"There are no grocery stores, for instance, in zip codes where 80-to-90 percent of the population is African American," he reported. "The number of people per supermarket in Santa Monica is 10,000, whereas the number of people per supermarket in East Los Angeles is 140,000. This is simply unacceptable."
City Councilman Herb Wesson agreed. He said the council was scheduling a hearing that would bring the concerns of grocery workers and people living in areas with no supermarkets before the committee he chairs on economic development. Shoppers in his own inner-city community have to wait in long lines at a Ralphs at Crenshaw and Rodeo to buy "picked over" produce, he noted.
City Council President Eric Garcetti pointed out that, after health care and utilities, the grocery business is probably the "most basic human concern."
After the press conference, Caine Levine told The Tidings he did the exact same work as coworkers who started at Albertsons before the new contract took effect. "The only way I'm treated differently is on my paycheck and my benefits," he said.
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