REPUBLICANS FOR LABOR….It’s nice to see that there are Republicans out there who support the supermarket strike here in California. Larry Miller in the Weekly Standard explains why he not only supports the strike, he’s even walking a picket line these days, and both Ralph Luker and Josh Chafetz register agreement. There’s nothing about being a conservative that inherently makes you anti-worker, after all. At least, there shouldn’t be.
One note, however: even Miller makes the mistake of saying that the big sticking point in negotiations is the five bucks a week that management wants workers to pay for health insurance, and if that’s all it was you might well wonder whether the union was being completely pigheaded. But while it’s true that healthcare is the main issue in the strike, management also wants to freeze wages for current employees and reduce wages and benefits dramatically for new employees. What’s more, the increase in healthcare costs is considerably more than five bucks. Who picks up the slack? Taxpayers, as these folks become eligible for MediCal.
This strike is about a helluva lot more than five bucks a week.
