Have Some Pickets Crossed the Line?

The four-page handwritten letter begins with the woman describing herself as initially supportive of the grocery strikers now closing in on two months on the picket lines.

By page 4, she was writing a different letter. And in those four pages, she captured what likely is an increasing strain on Southern California grocery shoppers.

“I am a thrifty woman with a family to feed,” she writes. “When the strike started, I continued to shop the very best sales at Albertsons, Vons and, occasionally, Ralphs, but I increased the amount I purchased at Stater’s to support the strikers and not enrich corporate greed.”

On the picket lines, she recognized cashiers who had checked her groceries for the last 15 years. “They gave me fliers and were very polite because they recognized me as a friendly, polite and patient customer. I explained what I was doing to support their efforts and they thanked me.”

That was then. “Now things are different,” she writes. Last week, after buying a Thanksgiving turkey at Stater Bros. and bread and muffins at a bakery, she went to Albertsons for potatoes (10 pounds for 55 cents), broccoli for 99 cents, apples for 99 cents and rolls for 89 cents.

She saw unfamiliar pickets, who “started trying to frighten people away with shouting and whistles and displays of in-your-face rudeness. When I went in, the pickets were hounding a young woman in her 30s. As she broke through their ranks, she entered the store in tears.”

The pickets next “targeted” an older woman who “kept her eyes down and slowly pushed through,” the letter writer says. “When I left with my purchases, which totaled $7.88, they descended on me.” One man shouted at close range, “Shame on you,” she writes. “I tried to explain that I supported the strike and had bought only sale items, but they shouted louder and louder.”

She says she no longer supports the strikers or “a union that has resorted to bullying innocent people caught in this strike.”

I wouldn’t reach that conclusion based on one store, but the potential for ugliness in protracted, high-stakes strikes always exists. People who believe their livelihoods are on the line sometimes lose their tempers.

Workers who are on strike or locked out want public support, but they also benefit if consumers don’t patronize targeted companies. Common sense tells you that “Get lost” might be more effective in that regard than “Have a nice day.”

The union insists its strategy is to make nice. “We have spent an enormous amount of time over the last year and a half, training and instructing our people on how to behave on the picket line,” says Bob Bleiweiss, a spokesman for several of the workers’ locals in Southern California.

But as the calendar pages fall away, frustration mounts. “Coming up on two months, I assure you the people on strike are suffering much greater hardship economically, emotionally and psychologically than any consumer,” he says.

Bleiweiss empathizes with the woman’s experience but says it is not typical of what’s going on around Orange County. He says he visits a picket line every day and, despite the increasing rancor caused by the strike, the pickets have maintained a generally cheery demeanor with shoppers, even though crossing a picket line “is in itself a disturbing thing to pickets.”

The letter writer, who says she lives in Orange, feels caught in the middle. It’s the pickets who are being squeezed, Bleiweiss says.

Tempers and manners aren’t likely to improve as the days drag on. Two months in and vowing to play it out, strikers can only hope the public cuts them some slack.

“We’re dealing here with human beings who are really being tested,” Bleiweiss says.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com.