Video: Why Did Occupy Redwood City Occupy Safeway?

Courtesy of Occupy Redwood City

This past Saturday Occupy Redwood City (ORWC), Occupy San Jose (OSJ), and three other local Occupy groups joined forces with members of various local building trades unions including Painters 913, Glaziers 718, and Floor Covering 12 to protest at the Sequoia Station Safeway and Wells Fargo.

In the spirit of OSJ's Wall Street Wednesdays, ORWC expanded its usual "Strike Back Saturday" march to be more than just a protest against the Big Banks: misbehaving corporations were also a target of the march and in that spirit ORWC protested Safeway and Wells Fargo together at the same location.

High-fives greeted the protesters as Safeway was called out for its unsavory corporate behavior. While Safeway employs union workers in their stores, the company has been building big-box, “lifestyle” stores without union labor and without prevailing wages here on the Peninsula.

Safeway also has been giving massive bonuses to their executives for minimizing the labor costs of each of these big-box projects in San Mateo County. This means low bids and the hiring of out-of-area workers who do not have medical or pension benefits and who are the least trained in personal and public safety. This means exclusion from jobs for the 14,000 unionized, apprenticed, and trained local workers who are out of work due to the recession.

In contrast, the three "lifestyle" stores Safeway erected in San Francisco were built using local union contractors. Without a similar commitment from Safeway to local wages and local hiring in San Mateo County, the thirty percent of local carpenters, painters, electricians and other workers who are still out of a job will remain out of a job. This leads to the loss of medical benefits, more foreclosures, and more cuts to working families and local governments.

By excluding our local union workers, we hurt their livelihoods and we hurt our communities. The children of our local union workers attend local schools. Local workers pay local taxes and patronize local businesses. But when these union members are excluded from jobs by Safeway, the burden of medical and social service costs are placed on local taxpayers instead of on the corporation. ORWC joined with OSJ, other Occupy groups, and their labor allies in declaring that if Safeway doesn’t want to hire workers from our community, they shouldn’t expect business from our community.

Next Target: Wells Fargo

After we called out Safeway for their anti-worker practices, the protest turned to corporate criminal Wells Fargo, also inside Safeway. Wells Fargo has allowed less than a quarter of their eligible homeowners to receive permanent loan modifications under HAMP (the federal Home Affordable Modification Program), and in fact cancels most of those. After receiving over $43 billion in taxpayer money, this Big Bad Bank continues to contribute millions to elections, take billions in card fees, and pay their CEO over $17 million while the average teller makes $22,000 annually.

Besides investing in companies that profit off prison-building, Wells Fargo also continues to use illegal robo-signing practices and maintains nearly eighty off-shore tax havens. Over the past ten years, Wells paid the lowest worldwide tax rate of the top five big banks, paying just under 25% on their $111 billion in earnings, and they did not pay any federal taxes in 2009.

In Redwood City alone nearly two dozen foreclosed homes were scheduled for sale in the past four weeks by Wells Fargo, or over two homes every three days. These are our neighbors and friends who are being foreclosed on, whether they be living in a home on Hoover Street or one on Washington Avenue, or whether they be living in a home on 10th Avenue or on Alameda de las Pulgas. Each foreclosure sale represents over $30,000 in lost revenue and increased cost to Redwood City.

These losses mean cuts in services to our community and cuts in jobs to our libraries, schools, police, and fire departments. By these rampant, indiscriminate, and predatory foreclosure actions, banks like Wells Fargo have led to the death of the American Dream.

ORWC is proud to stand with labor and say that we firmly believe that if Safeway can hire union workers to work inside their stores and to build their San Francisco branches, Safeway is just as capable of building on the Peninsula with local union labor. ORWC and OSJ are also proud to be the first Occupy groups to be Occupying a Big Bank branch inside a grocery store and to be actively connecting issues of economic justice and Big Bank greed with the issues of workers' rights and corporate dominance over local communities.

We sincerely hope all other Occupy groups take on this idea and start to protest all bank branches everywhere, using the opportunity grocery store branches give them to highlight the unfair labor practices in which many of these large chain groceries regularly take part. We are also extremely grateful for the show of solidarity from our labor brothers and sisters in this protest action, and we hope to join forces with labor again the next time we make a move to call out the corporations and the 1%.

What You Can Do to Help:

• Move your money out of Big Banks and into local credit unions. In credit unions there are no million-dollar bonuses for CEOs: profits are instead distributed back to credit union members. MoveOurMoneyUSA.Org has excellent resources for people looking to break up with their Big Bank, as does OccupyRedwoodCity.Org.

• Contact Safeway at (866) 239-1376 or at Business.Ethics@safeway.com and tell them that if they want local shoppers, they should hire local labor. Tell them you support the Occupy action that took place at Safeway and that you hope to see more of the same unless Safeway changes their anti-labor hiring practices.

• Join Occupy Redwood City Fridays at 5 PM, at Courthouse Square. Come see how the General Assembly process works and what actions you can take to stop foreclosures in our community. Visit OccupyRedwoodCity.Org to see what is new, and send an inquiry to ORWCMedia@gmail.com if you have skills you want to volunteer to the Occupy group or if you want to be placed on the group's mailing list.

And remember: YOU are the 99%!

Occupy Redwood City