-By Warner Todd Huston
It’s like some sort of spy novel gone bad where the Soviet Agents are somehow the good guys. A grocery store worker and union member that makes over $20 an hour “quits” his job and starts a job in another grocery store making only $10 an hour just so he can cajole his new workplace into joining the union from the inside, pretending to be one of them. In fact, the union “supplements” this activist’s pay while he invades the other store to agitate for unions there.
At issue is the organizing of the Fresh & Easy grocery chain in Huntington Beach, California. Fresh & Easy is a British chain that not long ago launched 83 stores in 3 states, one of them California, and ever since the United Food and Commercial Workers union has been agitating for the chain to become unionized.
The company offers health-care benefits to employees that work only 20 hours a week, but the unions want more, naturally. The chain says it stand behind its benefits and pay scale.
But here is the interesting part. The unions are not just presenting their union idea to Fresh & Easy employees for an honest and open debate about the value of the union, they are sneaking employees into the stores to act as inside agitators.
Helping organize Fresh & Easy workers in Huntington Beach is Graham Ozenbaugh.
The 19-year Vons employee started working at the store as a $10 an hour “customer assistant” in December with the specific goal of getting the workers to form a union.
Todd Conger said the use of undercover union lobbyists such as Ozenbaugh is typical in “major campaigns” waged by labor organizations.
Conger said these workers, who take a leave of absence from their union-grocery jobs, are given supplemental pay. Ozenbaugh earns $20.80 an hour as a Vons supervisor.
This underhanded, sneaky move is supposed to make people comfortable that unions are interested in fair representation? I don’t see how anyone can trust such an organization that would engage is these sorts of tactics?
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston