BOSTON, MA, April 29–On April 11, Stop & Shop workers at 240 stores went on strike in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut in the first grocery workers’ strike in 15 years at the only unionized supermarket chain in New England. Strikers said NO to low wages, attacks on pension plans, ending overtime pay for Sundays and holidays, drastic cuts to health care plans, and reduced hours for part-time workers. Progressive Labor Party (PLP) members and friends walked picket lines at half a dozen stores in Boston and Worcester, urging other workers to support the strike and calling for an end to the capitalist profit system. 
This strike was a heroic attack on a huge capitalist company and adds to the encouraging rise of strikes in the U.S. It was nearly 100 percent solid and strongly supported by customers. Stop & Shop lost $100 million during the 11-day strike, 75 percent of their business.  Worker solidarity beat back many company attacks, but workers still remain at semi-starvation wages.
The enemy is capitalism
Stop & Shop is owned by Ahold Delhaize (owner of Food Lion, Hannaford, Martin’s, among others), a Dutch corporation with 375,000 employees and stores in 11 countries. Ahold made a $2 billion profit last year, and is valued at $23 billion. This is an example of what Karl Marx called “consolidation of capital”—big companies gobble up smaller companies in order to cut costs, and stay competitive against their rivals. This law of capitalist economics can’t be changed through laws and regulations, or by working for “better” companies. The profit Stop & Shop made last year averages $6,000 per worker. In other words, each worker loses 1/4 of their pay to profit the company. Imagine, giving up 1/4 of your (already low) paycheck to make wealthy shareholders even richer –and it’s all legal under capitalism! That’s why we need a revolutionary change to a system of communism, where workers run society and profits and exploitation are illegal.
Undemocratic union sold out part-time workers
A Stop & Shop worker in Worcester, MA said workers at her store are angry: “We went on strike for all the workers. But there are no union meetings, and part-time workers got almost nothing.”  Union leaders told workers to go back to work before they even saw or had a chance to vote on the new contract. Seventy-five percent of Stop & Shop workers are part-time, and their average pay averages $12.75/hour. Many who work 30 hours a week have no health or retirement benefits.  Many part-time workers had their hours cut in the last few months, with no promise of getting their old hours back. The lowest-paid workers got only a 25-cent raise. The worst part of the contract is the “two-tier” system: new hires get lower wages, pensions, and benefits than current workers, dividing them from the better-paid full-time and longer-serving workers.
Striker’s fight inspired other workers
The strikers faced a tough battle as Stop & Shop kept some stores open using management as scabs. The company also used workers from prison-release programs as scabs, at much higher pay than most employees! The strikers weren’t allowed to even talk with workers, such as security, who are not part of the union, making it harder to spread the strike. The police sided with the company, not letting strikers at some stores block driveways to keep shoppers from crossing the picket line. And the union, United Food and Commercial Workers, only gave $100 a week in strike benefits. 
Strike support spread
Many workers from other trades supported this strike. Teamsters, or truck drivers refused to make food deliveries. At one picket line, 25 members of the steelworkers union–some recently locked out by gas company NSTAR for demanding a labor contract–showed up and militantly confronted  shoppers. Members of other unions (teachers, electrical and construction workers) also walked the picket lines. PLP members visited picket lines, and gave out strike support leaflets in English and Spanish and CHALLENGE newspapers. Politicians such as Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren showed up, hoping for votes, but it was working class solidarity that won the day, bringing strikes as workers’ strongest weapon back into the consciousness of the working class of New England. 
Let’s also bring the ideas of workers’ power and communist revolution into the consciousness of workers everywhere.