Take what both sides of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7's strike against Kroger Co. are saying publicly with a grain of salt, University of Colorado-Boulder economics professor Jeffery Zax suggests.
Zax has studied and taught labor and economics at CU since 1990. Below is a question and answer session, which has been edited for length, on the strike that began Wednesday at 77 metro Denver area King Soopers and City Market stores, involving some 8,400 workers. Cincinnati-based Kroger is the corporate owner of King Soopers and City Market stores in Colorado. Other than delaying the reopening of the Table Mesa store in Boulder originally scheduled for Jan. 20, Kroger officials have vowed not to close any stores.
Q: What have been your observations of how the strike has transpired thus far?
A: First, I'm struck that the employer has apparently taken a very strong stand. Interesting at this moment of history of our labor market where workers seem to have an unusual degree of power. It's interesting to see King Soopers challenging that power by resisting requests that the union is making for a new contract.
Q: Why do you think the workers have more power in today’s labor market?
A: There’s two pieces to it. First, when the pandemic hit, a number of people left the labor force and haven’t all come back. The labor supply is reduced when there are fewer workers. The second point is the nature of these particular jobs. I think that has changed noticeably with the pandemic. Three years ago, being a grocery store worker was probably a fairly routine experience. There was some manual labor involved, it was repetitive and so forth, but it wasn’t too challenging of a job. Two years later, in the current environment, grocery workers are at the front lines of the public health epidemic. They are exposed to thousands of people every day, and exposed to those germs and the virus. That could jeopardize not only the health of the workers, but also their families. That has changed the nature of the job. It's become arguably more dangerous. If you ask someone to do something that is difficult, and in a way actually dangerous to their health, generally speaking you’re probably going to have to pay them more. … Remember it’s not the union going on strike — it’s a negotiation with two sides failing to come to an agreement. Both parties have a responsibility to that.
Q: If this was a poker game, do you think the union blinked Thursday when it agreed to return to the bargaining table two days into the strike?
A: First, I wouldn't necessarily take the employer as an accurate reporter or whatever is going on here. When you refer to this as blinking, I think what you're inquiring about is whether the union has somehow reconsidered the strength of their position … I don't know if they re-assessed the likelihood of succeeding with a strike or if they learned something new about what Kroger has to offer and negotiate with. Ultimately, you want them to be negotiating. Strikes are bad for everybody — the employer, the workers and the customers. … You want to get out of the strike as fast as possible for everyone’s benefit. If the union has decided to negotiate again, and Kroger has suggested negotiations might be more effective, we all should be applauding that because we’d like everybody to get back to work.
Q: I only asked because (UFCW Local 7 President) Kim Cordova predicted the impact to Kroger’s operations would be great.
A: They might have felt they didn’t have the impact they wanted, but again you have to be careful with these public statements. On both sides, there’s probably a fairly large component of theater. They represent fear statements. The revelation of negotiating strategy you have to be really careful about is taking too seriously. There’s a good reason they may not be sincere in their statements of intent.
Q: Why do you think Colorado Springs stores are not participating in the strike> The meat cutters don’t want to cross the line because their contracts are good until Feb. 19?
A: I don’t know anything about that situation, but surely there’s respect for your co-workers there in different categories and to have a certain amount of regard for each other. Certainly, they recognize if you shut down one side when other workers have a valid contract, to continue working in that store you're putting your colleagues at a disadvantage.
Q: It’s safe to say America, politically, is incredibly divided. How do you think that atmosphere affects this strike?
A: With the rhetoric on both sides, there’s confusion about allegiances. You might expect workers and their families who are in the lower end of the income scale, they might have a fair amount of sympathy for their colleagues who are in grocery stores. At the same time, I’m not sure that’s always true now. I'm always surprised by how many people seem to take a position that employers have privilege or employers have rights to having a workforce that is pliable and cheap. The class divide in this domain is confusing and I don’t know how to explain it. The people on the right includes a lot in the socioeconomic that might align with the worker. But usually the sentiment on the right tends to be pro-employer. It’s a contradiction for sure.
Q: Can you explain the difference between an “economic” strike, and one over “unfair labor practices” — which is capped at three weeks?
A: The answer is I can’t because I don’t think there’s much of a difference. It’s all strategy with the goal of achieving a better bargain — just the legal constraints of what they can and can’t do and how they express themselves. … The economics are very meaningful one way or another. It’s not like they’re striking because someone said something nasty. Their goal is not to get an apology, it’s to get a new contract.
Q: Do you see more strikes coming in 2022 nationwide? Which industries would you think to be the most susceptible?
A: I’m not going to talk abut a specific industry, but I do think it’s fair to expect, relatively speaking, about the labor shortages we’re experiencing there’s not any immediate sign it’s going to relieve itself. So I expect many employers in many different industries are going to find that they have to work harder to both attract and keep workers. There seems to be a lot less agitation about rising minimum wages. I suspect the reason for that is because wages are going up anyway. So it seems less relevant. Expect a little harder pressure on employers to remain, particularly on employers whose workers are exposed to health risks like the pandemic.
Q: Last one: Have unions outlived their relevance or usefulness, or do they still play a key role in the economy?
A: They certainly haven’t outlived their usefulness. There’s the fundamental relationship between employer and employee. If an employer is negotiating with an individual, the employee doesn’t have much power in that negotiation. If an employer has many employees and is presumably recruiting all the time and can replace an occasional employee, there’s an imbalance of market power. In negotiations of that sort, that imbalance is economically inefficient. The economy is worse off when it’s inefficient.
When the sides are negotiating with each other equally, they’re equally endowed with market power. In order for labor to work efficiently, workers have to have that power to counter the employer and that requires them to act collectively.
Now that doesn’t mean everyone has to be unionized. Part of the reason why union membership has declined is because employers have gotten better at anticipating, and better providing, what workers want before the workers and union ask for it collectively. It’s very important that unions exist, and the possibility of unions exist … If employers didn’t see the possibility of having to negotiate collectively with their workers, that would free employers to use that market power for exploitive purposes when dealing with individual workers.
