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Outmoded leadership costs liquor clerks a pay raise
Friday, March 23, 2001
Liquor clerks from Western Pennsylvania got a little rowdy Sunday over their union leadership's inability to get them a new state contract. Who wouldn't feel rowdy, going more than five years without a pay raise?
But that's what leaders of the United Food and Commercial Workers have forced their members to endure during the impasse with the Ridge administration. The governor has a package of raises ready to go for the workers in the government-run liquor system, but he wants, as part of the deal, to eliminate the contract's successor clause - something the union leaders consider unthinkable.
In the happy event that Pennsylvania is one day able to join 48 other states (Utah is the other oddity) in allowing the sale of package liquor and wine by the private sector, the successor clause would force the new owners to hire the clerks at their state salaries. That would be a loser to any merchant interested in running his or her own liquor store.
The reason is state liquor employees, 38 percent of whom are part-time, make $6.91 to $13.20 an hour - no handsome sum, but more than other retail workers. They also get government-grade benefits, not to mention free legal services and money for health, golf or swim club memberships.
If businesses were forced to accept this financial baggage on the way to privatization, there would be far fewer takers. That means the government monopoly, which dates back to Prohibition, would continue further into the 21st century - which is exactly what liquor union leaders want.
But many of the union's members are growing testy and would rather get a raise for the here and now, instead of contract language to perpetuate government control. At the meeting Sunday at a Green Tree hotel, members of UFCW Local 23 gave an earful to Wendell W. Young III, the president of Local 1776 in Philadelphia, and they shouted down state Sen. Jack Wagner, who came to the union leadership's defense.
"I'm tired of working six years without a raise," said one worker from Castle Shannon. Another from Shaler accused union leaders of being inflexible. If ever there was a moment when a union leader and a Democratic lawmaker appeared out of touch, it was then.
But that's how it's been in Harrisburg, too, whenever governors like Tom Ridge and Dick Thornburgh have asked legislators to put the liquor system where it belongs, in the field of free enterprise.
Until that day dawns, Gov. Ridge is right to keep the state-store system free of obligations that would sabotage its transfer to private merchants. And liquor clerks who are tired of frozen paychecks due to stubborn leadership are right to speak up.