Seniors Support Workers at Rite Aid Lancaster Distribution Center

Last spring close to 700 workers at Rite Aid’s distribution center in Lancaster, California won the right to bargain for justice on the job. They fought a vicious anti-union campaign for two years in order to put an end to punishing production quotas and mandatory overtime piled on 10-hour shifts. They had endured working in hot desert summers with no air conditioning and no job security. In early March 2008 they won union with ILWU despite Rite Aid's anti-union tactics and joined International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 26.

But now management reportedly won't negotiate with them and is harassing those folks active with the union. Since the election victory, Rite Aid has continued to target pro-union employees with unfair discipline and firings; about 50 workers have been terminated in the last 6 months and that the company has made illegal, unilateral changes with regard to production standards and worker breaks.

Last week senior citizens from California Alliance for Retired Americans (CARA) brought public attention to the harassment and unfair labor practices of the Rite Aid distribution center in Lancaster with a rally in front of a Rite Aid store in San Francisco at Van Ness and Market streets.

CARA passed a resolution at their October convention in support of the Rite Aid Workers. CARA members went in to the San Francisco Rite Aid during the rally and met with the manager there. Tom Rankin, CARA treasurer and past president of California Labor Federation, was in the delegation of CARA members that appealed to Rite Aid management in San Francisco to send a message to Lancaster.

The manager in SF did fax a copy of the resolution to Lancaster while the delegation was there. CARA's Jodi Reid said: We have "no beef with the SF store per se - the workers there are members of the UFCW. The issue is with the Lancaster Distribution Center, and we were there to support them".