FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
LOS ANGELES – In a spontaneous show of union solidarity for striking Southern California grocery workers this morning, delegates of the California Teachers Association State Council of Education meeting in Los Angeles collected $9,000 for the strikers. CTA then matched the amount for a total contribution of $18,000.
The donations are the latest CTA show of support for the 70,000 workers striking against the corporations that own the Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons supermarkets. CTA is urging its 335,000 members and the public not to cross these picket lines, and to shop instead at other union stores listed on a flyer available on the CTA website: www.cta.org. Teachers are also being urged to print the flyer and post it at schools across the state.
The donations came after CTA President Barbara E. Kerr reminded the State Council’s 800 democratically elected teacher representatives – comprising the top governing body of CTA – that one of the strike’s central issues is employers wanting to sharply raise health care costs, a battle that many teachers are also fighting at bargaining tables in local school districts.
“They are fighting for something that is very near and dear to us – which is health care,” Kerr said. “Their struggle has implications for us all.”
Kerr, who recently brought bottles of water to strikers on a picket line at a Ralphs in Riverside, where she lives, introduced to the CTA Council Connie M. Leyva, president of Local 1428 of the United Food and Commercial Workers international union. Seven UFCW locals began their strike on Oct. 11 after the employers made it clear they wanted devastating cuts in benefits and retirement funding, Leyva said in an emotional speech.
“We are fighting to preserve the middle class,” Leyva said of the market workers’ efforts to simply protect their modest standard of living. These supermarket corporations are wealthy, she said, and are “profiting on the backs of our workers.”