A temporary worker earned more than he ever had before. A picket suffered a blow to his self-esteem.
By Ronald D. White
Times Staff Writer
March 10, 2004
The union member on the picket line and the replacement worker who took
his job kept their eyes on each other during the 20-week strike and
lockout.
As long as Tom Wilson could peer through the plate-glass windows
and spot Demond Camper uncrating tomatoes or spraying lettuce in the
sparsely supplied, infrequently shopped corner of Vons, he knew the
supermarket chains were suffering and the union had a fighting chance
to protect his wages and benefits.
As long as Camper saw that Wilson was outside in the parking lot,
carrying his picket sign, he knew that he had at least one more day on
a job that paid him more than he had earned in his life: $12 an hour,
so much that he could buy his kids Christmas gifts.
"It's hard to say what I would have been doing without this job,"
said Camper, 27. "Probably temporary work at minimum wage. They treated
me good here."
He pulled his last shift at the Vons at Lincoln Boulevard and
Broadway in Santa Monica last Thursday, the day before Wilson, 45,
walked back into the store for the first time in more than four months.
The strike and lockout that ended Feb. 29 put 59,000 people out of
work when the union struck Vons and Pavilions stores Oct. 11 and
Albertsons and Ralphs locked out their union members the next day. But
the dispute between the stores and the United Food and Commercial
Workers gave thousands new jobs.
Camper got his job days after the strike began. It wasn't long
before he noticed how often one of the men on the picket line strolled
past the front windows to look inside.
That was Wilson. The son of schoolteachers, both with diplomas
from UCLA, he graduated from Granada Hills High School but didn't
finish college. He might have become a landscaper, if the classes
hadn't been filled, or a welder, if he hadn't melted a new pair of
glasses on his first day trying that line of work. He was a
small-engine mechanic for a while, but it wasn't until he became a
clerk at Vons in 1985 that he settled on a career.
At first, he didn't manage his money very well — he said he was at
one point a step away from living in his car — but then made a pact
with his mother. They opened a joint savings account and every payday,
he deposited $300. By the time he went out on strike, he had more than
$30,000 saved up.
As for Camper, he had next to nothing in the bank when he filled out his application at Vons.
Raised in Los Angeles by his grandparents, Camper barely knew his
father; his mother was slain when he was 8. After graduating from
Washington High School, he drifted through an assortment of low-wage
jobs. There was a misdemeanor conviction in 1999 for carrying a
concealed weapon and another string of jobs, at a gas station, in a
parking lot, as a driver for an agency that provided transportation for
the elderly.
In 2003, he was convicted of a felony: falsifying an application
for a job as a baggage agent at Los Angeles International Airport; he
had answered "no" to the question of whether he had ever been convicted
of a serious crime.
On probation, the father of four young children had, when the
strike began, been unemployed for nine months, maintaining the hope of
a hip-hop career as a rapper called ES MAC'.
Chrysalis, a nonprofit organization that lines up jobs for the
poor and the homeless, told him about openings at Vons. "I needed the
money and they needed the people," Camper said, noting that the store
didn't seem to care about his criminal record.
Most of the pickets in the parking lot gave him a wide berth —
he's a solid 6 feet, 2 inches tall and about 190 pounds — but a few
threw verbal attacks. "A couple came at me and said I was taking food
out of their children's mouths. I told them I was rooting for them, but
this was a chance for me to get some experience under my belt."
Inside, one by one, many of the other temporary workers found the
jobs too physically demanding or the long hours unmanageable. Often
without notice, they didn't come back.
Camper stuck it out, showing up on time to do warehouse work,
never missing a day. When the replacement produce worker got fed up
with all of the heavy lifting and walked out, Camper stepped in. For
him, carting 60-pound bags of fruits and vegetables was no big deal.
Outside, pickets were dropping out too. Some crossed the line and
went back to work. Others, their bills mounting, laid down their signs
and took other jobs.
What Wilson found tough were the taunts from passersby who shouted
out that the pickets ought to try working for a living and paying for
their healthcare coverage like everyone else.
Moreover, the reserved, bespectacled Wilson discovered just how
important his job at Vons was to his self-esteem. With his blue apron
on, Wilson was confident, assertive, eager to help any customer.
Single and without children, sharing the rent on a Culver City
apartment with a roommate, the frugal Wilson cut his spending to $80 a
week, "food and gas money." Though he didn't share many pickets'
financial distress, he didn't like what was happening to him.
"I became a couch potato," Wilson said.
He used to wonder how people could rent three movies at a time and watch them before they were due back at the store.
Then, he found himself watching as many as three movies in one
day. "I've seen everything on the new releases wall at Blockbuster."
The stress got to him: One night after picket duty, he was on his
way east on the Santa Monica Freeway when he surprised himself by
skipping the 405 exit back to Culver City. He kept driving. Outside
Phoenix, he ran into a 10-mile-long traffic jam but didn't pull over
until he was in Tucson just past sunrise the next morning, 490 miles
from home. He hadn't slept or eaten. His clothes were pretty ripe, and
his picket sign was still in the back seat.
"I've never been to Texas and I guess I just decided to go. I told myself I'm just gonna drive and drive," Wilson said.
He didn't make it. His Saturn coupe had a slow leak in one tire,
and Wilson said he couldn't find a garage he trusted to fix it.
Besides, by that time he wasn't angry anymore. He filled the tire with
air and headed for L.A.
Camper started out driving a ramshackle 1983 Cutlass Supreme from
his grandparents' house to Santa Monica, but after two months at Vons,
he had enough money to upgrade to a $1,000, 13-year-old Chevy Lumina.
He installed a DVD player for his kids and put a pair of 12-inch Kicker
woofers in the trunk. He rented studio time to make his second rap CD,
"Spiritual Warfare." He even helped his grandmother pay for
Thanksgiving dinner for the whole family. And still he had money to
spend.
"Vons was good," he said. "It really helped me out during the
holidays. I was able to buy clothes for my kids, the name brand stuff,
Nike, a lot of things I wouldn't have been able to do."
Neither Camper nor Wilson could quite believe it when the new
contract was ratified. "I'm still going to go in to work until I hear
otherwise," Camper said. Wilson was nervous about returning to Vons
after such a long layoff: "I've got a pit in my stomach."
At Dockweiler Beach two days before he went back to work, he and
some of his union buddies made a bonfire out of their picket signs.
They feasted on beer and barbecued hot dogs.
The celebratory feeling wasn't exactly wholehearted, though.
Wilson had already decided he would stay only three more years at Vons;
he doesn't want to go through another contract negotiation.
"I'm going to save, save, save. Those three years will be gone in
the blink of an eye," he said. His plan: to go back to school to learn
computer skills. "I'll pray to God and hope he sends me the right way."
Untying his apron for the last time, Camper thought about his
future. No, his experience in the produce section wouldn't find its way
into his rap songs. Maybe, he said, the time he spent at Vons would
persuade another employer to hire him. He hadn't saved any money to
speak of, and didn't know exactly where he might go hunting for work.
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