There's an enormous supermarket strike going on in Southern California. It involves 70,000 workers at Albertson's, Ralph's (which is the same thing as Kroger), and Vons (which is also Pavilions, which is also Safeway). I had read that a strike might happen, but I had forgotten when it would happen until I pulled into the parking lot at Albertson's last night and saw workers picketing. I won't cross this picket line; the supermarkets are trying to pull a huge screwjob on their workers, and I'm anti screwjob. They want to make massive cuts in healthcare that would raise premiums for family benefits by at least $800 per year while raising deductibles and co-pays. New hires would get an even worse deal, receiving plans worth a third of the value of plans held by current workers. In addition, there are salary issues: the supermarkets want to freeze the salaries of current workers and substantially lower the salaries at which they hire new employees.

Media coverage of a strike in progress is always much more interesting than coverage of an impending strike. For one thing, you get gems like this:

"The gravy train is over," yelled one man, as he strode from the Eagle Rock [Vons] store, not wanting to be interviewed.

That's priceless. It's almost as good as the time I waited in a remarkably long line at the post office while a man well advanced in years monopolized one of the three clerks; he was one of those people who brings in sixteen packages--each of which needs to go to a different country--but insists on filling out all the customs forms right there in front of the clerk. At 4:50 pm. "I give you $200,000 a year in taxes!" he told the clerk in a voice he obviously hoped we would all overhear. "Well, if you're giving it to me, something's wrong, because I'm not getting it," she returned. I cheered her silently.

Grocery store workers, by the way, aren't exactly rolling in the dough: even long-time checkers make somewhere around $35,000 a year; most workers make a whole lot less. And this is in Southern California, where you could sell a Fisher Price playhouse in someone's backyard for a couple hundred grand if you could manage to get the proper permits.

Then, there are quotes like this one:

A Gelson's in Pacific Palisades as much more crowded than usual. "Business is way up," said Gelson's grocery manager Eric Gibson.

That ticked off Edith Bartz, a Gelson's regular who was forced to circle the lot several times looking for a parking space. "OK, I wasn't annoyed about this strike before, but I am now," said Bartz, from the driver's seat of her turbocharged Audi A4. "I don't have time for this."

I wonder if Edith knows Anna Gitlin?