Vons' strike hits home hard
By Jesse Phelps

He really didn't have to do this. But then again, if you ask him, he did.

Tim Austin is a familiar face to many Ojai residents. For the past 12 years, he's been the guy that checks out your groceries during the late shift at Vons. But he's been on the job for 30 years total, having begun in Montecito after graduating from UCSB. By 10 hours of accrued vacation, he was able to retire as the strike hit but that hasn't stopped him from picketing.

Why? For one thing, his wife - who he met on the job, a common occurrence according to Austin - has longer to go before her retirement from the Ventura store. The couple has two grown children and two still living with them at home in Ojai. One attends Montessori and the other is a special needs student at Mira Monte School.

Having been on the job so long, Austin, unlike many of the other strikers, has some interesting perspectives. For one thing, he said, he isn't interested in blowing the horn of the union too much. He said that the representatives are doing what they can but that the Ojai strikers don't see them as much as they'd like.

Plus, the union's representatives have not trained the strikers in how to be most effective. "The union has not informed us about the issues so we can relate that on the front line to the customers," said Austin. "The union has done a lousy job of informing us and a lousy job educating the public."

If it sounds like he speaks from experience, it's because Austin has been here before. Unlike many of the strikers, he said, he was on the line the last time a strike was called, some 25 years ago. "A lot of these people haven't been here that long," he said. "They're not familiar with labor disputes, they're not familiar with how to walk the line," he said.

As such, he's taken it upon himself to train them, not in the law, which the union took care to articulate, but in how to be effective. "This is part of having a union job," he said. "It's an endurance test. The workers have to unite. The (market's executives) want to get rid of these second-income, middle-income jobs. I've raised four kids on this job.

"I have a different perspective. When I struck 25 years ago, there was no defense fund (to pay a stipend to strikers). We were on strike for our jobs. But I was lucky because it was short," said Austin.

He said he's not worried that the current dispute is dragging on so long, but knows his fellow strikers need encouragement.
"Negotiations are intermittent. That's because the strategy of the corporate guys is not to negotiate, it's to outlast us," said Austin. "They're counting picketers, they're counting customers, they're counting the people that decide to go back to work, although nobody at (the Ojai) store, that I know of, has done that."

He sais that, so far, the Ojai workers are standing firm, with an assist from the community. "It's been a good 10 weeks because the community is behind these guys," said Austin. "For the most part people respect us as individuals and that's important. But a lot of people don't know the issues. The strike is about saving these jobs. They want to bring in low-wage new hires."

Regardless of the outcome, no one should worry about the markets, said Austin. "Their profits are up 90 percent over the last five years. They make lots of money," he said.

From his perspective, the strike could be seen as a result of poor business judgements.

In fact, the entire labor contract could have been paid for, he contends, from money lost through some bad acquisitions and mergers negotiated by Safeway president Steve Byrd.
"The marketing strategy of Safeway is to buy these small chains," he explained. "It hasn't worked out real well. The loans for these buyouts are coming due in 2004 and 2005."

Austin is more concerned for his fellow strikers and said a percentage of have already drifted away into other available jobs. Most, he said, in fact have second jobs so they can support themselves during the protracted negotiations. "They've got to survive and they picket when they can," said Austin.
In response to complaints from some in the community that have crossed the line, saying that the strikers have acted inappropriately, Austin said that he hasn't seen it and doesn't believe it.

"These are not longshoremen, these are people people," he said. "Most of these people are tired of being here and they don't know what to say. So they come out here and they hold a picket sign."

Austin said other people in the community have expressed concern that the strikers won't be able to afford Christmas presents for their kids. One child even designed some boxes to hold donations. "We've gotten donations for individuals," he said. "We had a customer come up and tell us that her daughter wanted to make a donation. We told her, rather than donate, to have her daughter make some boxes for us and decorate them."

The boxes now sit out front of the store with Austin and the rest of the old Vons crew. Meanwhile, their kids continue to go to school, hoping that their parents lives, and their own, will return to normal soon.

© 2003 The Ojai Valley News

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