Ok, i asked a friend who is i
Posted by yoda on Wed, 12/03/2003 - 3:09pm.
ok, i asked a friend who is into all this stuff, and he pointed me to this settlement offer.

basically, the main complaint is with not being able to make median wages no matter how long you've been there. if you check page 18, you'll see that after working full time for almost 4 years, you hit the top of the pay scale and can't advance further. while the maximum amounts would be a halfway decent wage for someone just out of high school, it'd be difficult to raise a family on that. and, socal has a higher cost of living than many places in the US (gas prices are hovering around $1.69/gal for regular stuff and that's way down from the summer) the reason the vons (safeway) workers are on strike are because they don't want to pay the $5-$15/week for health care. albertsons and ralphs locked out their union employees so that vons wouldn't be singled out.

the holiday and vacation allotments are another thing that are pretty bad.

from page 16 of that agreement: after working for 6 mos, they get 2 holidays their first year (christmas and thanksgiving). then after having been there a year, 4th of july is thrown in the mix. after another 6 mos they get labor day. Then, 6 mos later (after being employed for 2 years), new years day. finally, after 3 1/2 years, they get memorial day. so basically when you start, you get no paid holidays. after a year they'll have 3 holidays. after 2 years they'll have 5 paid holidays. then after 3.5 years, they'll have a whopping 6. (to compare, my company gives everybody 12 paid holidays a year.)

vacation is similar. after year 1 you get 1 week. by year 3 you've finally graduated to 2 weeks, and after 7 years of service you can get 3 weeks of vacation. (my company gives new hires 2 weeks to start with)

oh, and the new hire health care wouldn't start until the 13th month of employment, and not until the *37th* month for dependants.

and of course, the executives get much much more.

ok, enough of that...

but yeah, i think we should go on strike too...we've gotta pay extra for healthcare too! UC GSI's are supposed to go on strike tomorrow.
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