AFSCME, Teachers Donate $5K To Stop & Shop Strikers

Donated donuts, cups of coffee, and bags of chips sat on a table behind a crowd of striking Stop & Shop workers in Hamden Monday afternoon as two unions came through with another donation: a total of $5,000 to the fund that will help them get through the strike without pay.

The donations came from the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 4 and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) of Connecticut, both of whom gave $2,500 dollars. Both unions pledged to give an additional $500 each week for the rest of the strike.

“AFT Connecticut is 30,000 members,” said AFT Connecticut President Jan Hochadel. ​“Know that when you’re standing as 30,000, it’s no longer 30,000.”

“It’s 30,000 plus 30,000, plus 30,000,” she continued, referring to the membership of AFT Connecticut and AFSCME Council 4, both of which number around 30,000.

AFSCME Council 4 represents state, municipal, board of education, and private sector employees in Connecticut. AFT Connecticut represents teachers, para educators, higher education workers, state employees, and healthcare workers.

Hochadel said that when nurses as Lawrence Memorial Hospital in New London went on strike a few years ago, other unions stepped up to support them with donations. Now, she said, it’s AFT’s time to return the favor.

“Union means you’re never alone,” she said.

“You just want what you’ve earned, you want what’s fair, and you’re not asking for more. You’re just asking to keep what you’ve got,” said AFSCME Council 4 President Jody Barr.

Locals within AFT have also pledged their own donations. Newtown Federation of Teachers President Tom Koroski, who was also at the Hamden Stop & Shop Monday, said his union will donate $500 to the fund. Mary Yordon of the Norwalk local said that her local will be considering a donation as well.

The donations will support the strike fund of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW), which represents the two locals involved in the Stop & Shop strike: Local 371 and Local 919.

The strike fund supports union employees during the strike. Local 919 Business Rep. Jorge Cabrera said that UFCW has set up the mechanism to receive donations for the fund, but has not yet determined how they will be distributed. He said the fund comes entirely from donations.

“The support from the public has been nothing short of amazing,” said Cabrera. That support, he said, has come not just from other unions, but also from customers. ​“Stop & Shop underestimated the amount of good will [its employees] build with their customers,” he said. ​“We expected customer support. Not like this.”

Earlier in the afternoon, as striking workers stood outside the doors at the entryway, bracing themselves against the damp wind that blew in from the parking lot, a customer stopped by to drop off a bag of clementines. Workers said that the donations had been pouring in.

Joe Renaldi, who serves as shop steward for Local 919 at the Hamden Stop & Shop, said that on Friday, Hamden town hall employees came and dropped off pizzas. Customers have been by with cases of water, subs from Jersey Mike’s, chicken from Popeyes.

As the table of donated food showed, many supporters had also brought by coffee and donuts.

“The running joke right now is we’ve all never drunk this much coffee or had this many donuts in our life,” said Vincent Lucibello.

“Eerie”

When Hamden Legislative Council Rep. Marjorie Bonadies walked out of the store, she had one word to describe what it was like inside: ​“eerie.”

She said the store was empty, though the refrigeration was on and many shelves were still stocked. She had gotten some meat, which many of the workers outside cautioned against because it was approaching its expiration date. The prepackaged fruit shelves, she said, were empty.

Bonadies had come to the store because she works right around the corner and it was her lunch break. She also said she had also heard from a co-worker who came last week and was confronted by workers, so she wanted to come herself to see what would happen. No one said a word to her, she said.

The Hamden Stop & Shop is still open, though only from 8 – 8 rather than for 24 hours as it normally is. On Monday, a manager was inside the store helping run the self-checkout machines. He politely asked the Independent to leave the store, saying he could not talk to the press and that photographs inside were not allowed.

Two men who called themselves ​“help” were there assisting the manager. They did not give their names or say who they were, but they said they were helping keep the shelves stocked and the store running.

Cabrera said he thought they might have been hired by an employment agency that Stop & Shop hired to help bring in a few hands while its workers are on strike. He said that people at UFCW had recently seen ads posted for those positions on Indeed.com.

The union employees are not allowed to enter the store while on strike. As they stood outside the entrances, the occasional customer wandered past and into the store, approximately one every 15 or 20 minutes.

“Nothing is fresh,” one employee called to a customer as she breezed past through the automatic door.

Many said they didn’t realize that Stop & Shop workers are on strike.

“I’m in total support of these guys,” said one as he wheeled his grocery-laden cart out the door. He said that he’s a caretaker for an elderly woman woman, and that he had to come get groceries for her, but that he would not come back to Stop & Shop until the strike is over.

Everyone has an excuse to cross the picket line, said Clem Piscitelli, an employee of 38 years. They say they have a family to feed, he said, ​“but so do we.”

Piscitelli said that he and the other Stop & Shop workers have always been there when the company needed them. He said he has left early from weddings, missed birthday parties, and driven to work in blizzards so he could cover a shift that the store needed filled.

“Now,” he said, when the workers need help from the company, ​“all we hear is crickets. They play broke. They make money off our back.”