The big chain grocery stores in LA went on strike on Sunday. At midnight today, the bus system went on strike.
I drove past one of the striking stores, Albertsons, today. The parking lot was almost empty. I'm not convinced anyone was in there except the scabs. The picketers were out front with signs, whooping it up as passing motorists honked their horns and gave thumbs-up. Apparently Angelenos are not the picket-line-crossing type.
The Trader Joe's -- an earthy-crunchy but affordable California-based chain -- across the street is not unionized, so no pickets. Ditto for the Longs Drug. And yes, even the drugstore was more crowded than usual. I circled twice before I found a parking spot. Entire displays in Trader Joe's were picked clean. The lines were long. I chatted with someone in line who said on the first day of the strike, people panicked.
Panicked? Come on, even drugstores sell food in this country. I'm really only slightly inconvenienced by this. I should do more shopping at local markets, anyway.
I'm a little more ambivalent about the bus strike. The bus Rick takes to UCLA is not affected, because it's a Santa Monica bus that happens to run in LA, not an LA city bus. But still. We have a car, and losing that bus would still be an inconvenience. Imagine having no car, no bus, and trying to get to work. In LA. Very spread-out LA.
I used to think you couldn't survive in LA without a car. You can. I've met plenty of people who do. It's just inconvenient. I bitched a lot about the T when I lived in Boston, because I'd been spoiled by European public transit. But let me tell you, LA buses make Boston look like Berlin. Yet 500,000 people -- the entire population of Boston is 589,141, while we're on the subject -- rely on LA buses. Some are students, but many are the working poor. And a lot of them are going to have a lot of trouble getting to work until this thing is over. I'm sympathetic to unions: they're one of the few pro-worker institutions in this ridiculously corporate land of ours. However, one of the reasons we need unions is to keep the richer from screwing the poorer. With the bus strike, the union members are the richer, compared to the poorer transit riders they're screwing. No one's winning here except the SUV drivers charging $10 a ride to people whose median income is $12,000 a year. (Source: LA Times, free registration required but worth it.)
So I'm not sure I'd honk my horn for the bus mechanics that caused this, if they were picketing by a bus stop. Part of me would want to -- the fight is over health insurance, and that shouldn't be a luxury. Then again, the people stranded at bus stops this morning probably don't have health insurance, either.
A 60-year-old legal secretary quoted in that LA Times article identified the real culprit: "We're the only industrialized nation that doesn't have a national health care system and that's at the root of the problem." Amen.
I drove past one of the striking stores, Albertsons, today. The parking lot was almost empty. I'm not convinced anyone was in there except the scabs. The picketers were out front with signs, whooping it up as passing motorists honked their horns and gave thumbs-up. Apparently Angelenos are not the picket-line-crossing type.
The Trader Joe's -- an earthy-crunchy but affordable California-based chain -- across the street is not unionized, so no pickets. Ditto for the Longs Drug. And yes, even the drugstore was more crowded than usual. I circled twice before I found a parking spot. Entire displays in Trader Joe's were picked clean. The lines were long. I chatted with someone in line who said on the first day of the strike, people panicked.
Panicked? Come on, even drugstores sell food in this country. I'm really only slightly inconvenienced by this. I should do more shopping at local markets, anyway.
I'm a little more ambivalent about the bus strike. The bus Rick takes to UCLA is not affected, because it's a Santa Monica bus that happens to run in LA, not an LA city bus. But still. We have a car, and losing that bus would still be an inconvenience. Imagine having no car, no bus, and trying to get to work. In LA. Very spread-out LA.
I used to think you couldn't survive in LA without a car. You can. I've met plenty of people who do. It's just inconvenient. I bitched a lot about the T when I lived in Boston, because I'd been spoiled by European public transit. But let me tell you, LA buses make Boston look like Berlin. Yet 500,000 people -- the entire population of Boston is 589,141, while we're on the subject -- rely on LA buses. Some are students, but many are the working poor. And a lot of them are going to have a lot of trouble getting to work until this thing is over. I'm sympathetic to unions: they're one of the few pro-worker institutions in this ridiculously corporate land of ours. However, one of the reasons we need unions is to keep the richer from screwing the poorer. With the bus strike, the union members are the richer, compared to the poorer transit riders they're screwing. No one's winning here except the SUV drivers charging $10 a ride to people whose median income is $12,000 a year. (Source: LA Times, free registration required but worth it.)
So I'm not sure I'd honk my horn for the bus mechanics that caused this, if they were picketing by a bus stop. Part of me would want to -- the fight is over health insurance, and that shouldn't be a luxury. Then again, the people stranded at bus stops this morning probably don't have health insurance, either.
A 60-year-old legal secretary quoted in that LA Times article identified the real culprit: "We're the only industrialized nation that doesn't have a national health care system and that's at the root of the problem." Amen.
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