Dear Debra and Janice,
Rather than ask you to sign a pledge, I thought I would simply request your assistance in the ILWU struggle for union recognition at Rite Aid. I’ve written a letter to the corporate headquarters, explaining why I support the union’s boycott and urging the company to respect collective bargaining rights.
Please join me and rank and file ILWU members at the harbor in boycotting this store and urging your supporters to do likewise. Together, we can condemn all anti-union rhetoric and lend our support to workers living in fear of employer retribution. As my ILWU brothers and sisters remind us, “An injury to one is an injury to all,” so let us be staunch advocates of self-determination at the workplace.
Your sister in struggle,
Marcy Winograd
4.1.2001 * ILWU Rally, San Pedro, California
[My letter to Rite Aid below the jump]
Rite Aid Corporation
c/o Corporate Secretary
P.O. Box 3165
Harrisburg, PA 17105
[email protected].April 5, 2011
Dear Rite Aid Board of Directors:
As a candidate for California’s 36th congressional district, I join the ILWU in boycotting your stores until Rite Aid agrees to bargain in good faith with its workers. I am referring to warehouse employees, working under sweltering conditions, at your Rite Aid store in Lancaster. These workers deserve to be treated humanely and in accordance with the union certification they won years ago. To express my support for these workers’ demands, I joined with ILWU workers in the Los Angeles harbor to walk the picket line in front of Rite Aid in San Pedro. Following the picket, I learned more about Rite Aid’s record with labor:
***In Ohio, workers at six Rite Aid stores began a strike on March 14th to protest the company’s violation of employee and union rights. Rite Aid’s also trying to cut their health benefits;
***At the giant Lancaster, CA, distribution center, Rite Aid is trying to gouge employees by marking-up their cost of health insurance by 28 times over the increases being charged by insurers.
***In Pennsylvania, Rite Aid has been trying extract harsh concessions from store employees for months, weakening morale.
***In New Jersey, Rite Aid also is looking to gouge employees by changing their already expensive health care plan to an even more unaffordable plan and trying to prevent workers at its newly acquired stores from joining a union to secure their rights on the job.
Consequently, I ask thousands of my supporters throughout the nation to join in the ILWU boycott of Rite Aid. I am posting this letter to my 3,000 friends on facebook and tweeting a link to it, so that the message reverberates nationwide. Additionally, I ask my leading opponents in this May 17th special election to join me in boycotting Rite Aid and publicly urging their supporters to do the same.
I look forward to hearing from you – and receiving assurances from your corporate headquarters that your company will respect hard-fought collective bargaining rights.
Sincerely,
Marcy Winograd
[email protected]
13428 Maxella Ave., #359
Marina del Rey, CA 90292
ILWU’s Michael Morales and Marcy Winograd
************
Phil Abraham, Winograd for Congress 2011
Please join me in supporting the ILWU. Sign up at Winograd for Congress 2011.
As a supporter of Marcy Winograd’s campaign for Congress, I attended the demonstration pictured above. I share her outrage at how Rite Aid defrauds its workers. One of the workers from ILWU Local 26 told us that the 500 warehouse workers in Lancaster are being overcharged $150 per month for their health insurance premiums. He explained that the true cost of the insurance had been investigated by union personnel and compared with how much the company was deducting from their pay checks. Who knows how widespread this practice is throughout the company and to what extent this is being done by other companies nationwide? Another ILWU man explained that this practice could even be “legal”. Americans need to understand that this usurpation of the rights of one group threatens all of us. The Winograd candidacy is a wake-up call.
WhenI heard how anti-union the CEO of Home Depot was a few years ago, I stopped shopping there. At least I can feel better about where I spend my money. I try to shop at my local hardware stores and other small businesses in my hood. I may spend a few cents more but I want those businesses to be there and so I support them by putting my money where my values are.
Would love to get these numbers for Hahn and Bowen (they both welcome corporate donations). If voters think they might be voting for Hahn, they should remember that the city of Los Angeles is facing a massive deficit of over $400 million — and that Janice Hahn is part of the source problem, not part of the solution. She and Debra Bowen are both beholden to corporate donations and to special interests.
Bowen voted against SB335 and to de-regulate the energy industry,passing on the costs of the dangerous Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant to the ratepayer. During the energy crisis, when she chaired the Senate Energy Committee, she took money from Enron and refused to support re-regulating the energy industry. This fiasco cost the state over $40 Billion dollars!
Bowen jumped all over Hahn’s cynical pro-Harman AIPAC pledge the day Hahn issued it; where are they on actually demonstrating, not just paying lip service to, the rights of workers who live and work in the District? Marcy, my spouse, has been a lifelong advocate for workers (as have I), and we have had enough of politicians who court unions during campaigns, gladly accept donations, endorsements from union leaders and the people power they can provide, and then forget about all of that when it’s time for legislation to improve workers’ lives and bolster the middle class. We need a workers’ advocate in Congress, someone who takes no corporate cash, and won’t forget where she came from!