A Giant labor pain

I was out doing my shopping yesterday when I spied a note in our local Giant store. Apparently the store will be closed for a portion of Tuesday (10:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. sticks out in my mind) for a meeting of all the union employees to ratify their new contract. While I'm not aware of any labor strife between the union and the grocery chain or how many other stores this particular contract would affect, it does make for some inconvenience for certain daytime shoppers.

But what if the union did turn thumbs-down on a new deal? Would the Giant employees go out on strike and threaten their market share?

Having lived in a heavily union city most of my life, let me tell you that there are some who are really, really militant about not crossing picket lines. (And don't even go there with them about shopping in a non-union store like Wal-Mart.) Certainly one option for Giant if a strike were to come to pass would be to hire temporary "scab" workers who could keep the business running while the regular employees stood around outside by the street with their picket signs. (Did you know that in many cases they are paid for the task?)

Then that brings up the question of what Giant's corporate owners (a Dutch firm called Ahold) would do to attract shoppers. In my experience, having a local grocery chain on strike was a great time for consumers like me who didn't mind crossing picket lines because man, did they put up the loss leaders. It would certainly skew my upcoming market basket report next month.

However, as I said at the top, this is all idle speculation because they may already have a done deal that's deemed fair for both union and corporation. Let's hope so for both their sakes - with all the other passionate discourse between locals on a number of subjects, a grocery strike would not be welcomed.