1300 workers at a grocery distribution center in New Jersey, USA lost their jobs recently when Pathmark Stores' parent company, A&P, closed the center. Distribution was moved to a location in Pennsylvania, not only costing the NJ workers their jobs but undercutting their union-mandated wages by hiring non-union, and in many cases even illegal, workers for the new facility.

Teamsters representatives have been out at stores owned by A&P, distributing literature and asking consumers to take their business elsewhere.

I, for one, am a former UFCW member and this latest grab for profit at the expense of people just reminded me of the large-scale strike that took place among the UFCW employees at Foodtown when I worked there about 20 years ago.

I left the Pathmark store and vowed not to spend my money at any A&P stores again until the matter of the job loss of these employees is settled.

I'm posting this because it's just these kinds of things that made the labor movement of the 30s and 40s so effective. The greed of the major corporations in the US especially is finally hitting the WORKING man and woman at the bottom of the food chain. For a long time, profit-driven atrocities really only seemed to affect people in terms of raised prices or lowered wages.

Now that these outfits are actually being run into the ground by the uncaring leeches at the top, they are trying to save their sinking ships by throwing their "ballast" overboard - the people that actually make their stores work.

How about some new labor protest songs?

I'm getting to work on some, for sure... this crap is starting to affect not only the stores near me, but people who live and work in the same social and economic bracket as me. We're now not only the ones WATCHING the damage that started to happen, we're the ones being damaged ourselves.

Just FYI.