At the end of June, grocery workers in Southern California represented by UFCW Local 770 voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike against supermarket behemoths Albertsons and Ralphs. Workers have been negotiating a new contract since March, but the companies’ offers have so far been pitiable. The new contracts that employees have been offered include a less than 1 percent wage increase as well as cuts to their health benefits. And despite gangbuster profits, grocery store employees’ wages haven’t kept up with Los Angeles’s rapidly rising cost of living. (The median rent in Los Angeles is $2,500 a month.) By voting to authorize a strike, union members “stated resoundingly,” said UFCW Local 770 president John Grant, “that we will not stand by while these wealthy corporations . . .  force these hard-working grocery clerks to struggle in order to put food on the table and pay rent.”

This isn’t the first time that Southern California grocery workers have gone on strike. In October 2003, grocery workers from San Diego to San Luis Obispo initiated the longest and largest grocery workers’ strike in US history, which ended up lasting more than four months. The strike, however, was terribly unsuccessful: Even though the combined efforts of workers and consumers caused grocery companies to collectively lose over $1.5 billion, many workers crossed picket lines and prevented stores from being closed. UFCW leadership didn’t allow locals to coordinate their strikes, community support was tepid, and workers were completely unsure about what to do during the strike. After the UFCW’s strike fund ran dry, Albertsons and Ralphs crammed a contract with reduced wages and benefits down workers’ throats.

Yet the strike became the longest in UFCW history and helped to foster lasting worker solidarity. UFCW spokesman Mike Shimpock, commenting on the outcome of the 2003 strikes, said that “if we had not gone on strike and been locked out in 2003–04, the assault on grocery workers would have been ferocious.” It doesn’t matter whether the strike was successful, he said, because “the act of standing up for ourselves showed we had the will that’s helped protect us during the years.”