For thoes of you who don't know, the major grocery store chanes in California (probably elsewhere as well) began on strike. Vons is the main store short of employees, though all the other majors are effected as well... The reason for their protest is due to the supermarket chains wanting to decrease their benefits, most notibly health insurance.

I do understand this as being something important. However, I made an effort today to travel and shop at a few Vons stores today.

The bottom line as to why is simple. I do NOT like unions. I first learned about unions and what they stood for in my economics class in high school. From that point on I did not like the concept. One of my main reasons for disliking them (but certainly not the only reason) is the fact that they are manditory. If you get hired at a grocery store (under normal circumstances) that has a union. In order to keep your job you MUST join the union!

To me this alone is very unamerican. The idea of the union is to give employees more power, however in making them manditory, they can take away rights. I had decided long before I started working that when I did get a job, I would not work someplace that has a union. I really don't believe it is fair to require me to do this. It violates my freedom of choice, and my freedom of privacy. You also are required to give a portion of each paycheck (my guess would be a small portion, but I'm not fully sure) to the union. And when something like this comes along, the employee has no choice, when they're told to strike, they have to strike. I prefer the old theory of if you don't like what you're given, you leave and go somewhere else. If you want to get a handful of employees together to join you, then go for it. But let the choice be just that, a choice...

I have other issues as well, one being my support for corperate structures and giving them control. I do belive it's important that I express the fact that I am not wealthy, not even close. I scrape by from paycheck to paycheck, I have a few large debts that I'm trying to get paid off little by little, and I do struggle quite often, many times needing help from family. One of my newer large bills are due to medical reasons, I had major surgeries due to a serious infection after a total hip replacement surgery on my right hip. This infection nearly left me for dead. When I went into the hospital (I was barely able to call 911 before loosing conceousness), the doctors told my mother that I was going to die. They stuck me in a room saying there was nothing they could do.

Welp, as you guessed I made it. But I am paying for it now, and it's not cheep. I do have insurance, but the remainder adds up to quite a bit.

At any rate, I do not have anything against the employees, I simply do not like the union for which they are serving. Which is why I'm trying to shop at many Vons stores. This is my protest against unions... Only real difference is mine 100% only my own choice. And for thoes of you who may say the current employees are striking by their own choice: Then why didn't they start before the union told them to???