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Strikers Struggle To Keep Faith

Grocery Workers On Strike For 18 Weeks

POSTED: 4:09 pm PST February 5, 2004
UPDATED: 3:22 pm PST February 9, 2004

Frustrated strikers are beginning to walk off the picket line and go back to work, 10News reported.

One day after the grocery workers' union offered to end the strike, 10News learned that a growing number of grocery workers are crossing the picket lines.

In some stores, as many as 80 percent of union members have gone back to work.

Monique Posada, a locked-out employee, said, "I have two kids. I'm lucky I have my in-laws, or else I wouldn't have anything."

Posada worked for Ralphs before she was locked out. Now, she pickets at a Chula Vista Vons. Without the locked-out Ralphs employees, there wouldn't be much of a picket line at the store.

One source told 10News that almost all of the union members at that store crossed the picket line and returned to work. The same thing happened at other Vons stores, countywide.

Rudy Castillo is a Vons worker who is not giving up. He said he understands why so many fellow union members are no longer walking with him.

"The way I feel is, you have to do what you got to do to support your family. When you have kids and a mortgage payment, you got to do what you got to do. It hurts, but I'm not going to hold anything against them," Castillo said.

Posada, on the other hand, is not as sympathetic.

"It does hurt because they had their presents for Christmas. They had them for their families. They had their food. They don't have to worry about anything. They had their paychecks coming in. We get $100 a week," Posada said.

In the meantime, more than half of all Albertson's and Von's shoppers in San Diego said they are still shopping at the two stores.

According to a KGTV/Survey USA exclusive poll, more than one-third of 388 Safeway shoppers polled said they never honored the strike and do not intend to; 26 percent have always honored the strike; 28 percent honored the strike at first, but no longer honor the strike; and 10 percent of the shoppers did not honor the strike at first, but now honor it.


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