AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and officials from the United Food and Commerical Workers will meet today to discuss the strategy of the ongoing grocery strike. While labor leaders support the strike, they have been critical of UFCW's tactics, saying that have not articulated the contract issues well enough, lack imagination, and are not militant enough. The strike, now in its ninth week, has grown to 70,000 workers for Safeway and Kroger, plus teamsters who refuse to cross picket lines. Negotiations are to resume Monday, but they two sides are far apart on the key issues of health benefits and pay scale for new hires.
See "Strike's Strategy Is On the Line", Nancy Cleeland, Los Angeles Times, December 15, 2003