Union Basically Proposes Gov’t Run Grocery/Drug Stores?

Warner Todd Huston* | June 27, 2008

-By Warner Todd Huston

It sure seems as if a union head has basically proposed that the government take over grocery and drug stores in New York. John R. Durso, president of Local 338 of the Retail Worker Department Store/United Food and Commercial Workers union, wrote in a recent public statement that the people cannot expect stores to serve the public and that government should step in with more legislation.

A recent report by the New York state’s attorney threatened a lawsuit against the drug store chains Rite Aid and CVS after an investigation found that expired goods were being sold at stores in New York. This prompted the union chief to say that the investigation “proves that we shouldn’t rely on drug stores to provide necessary food items to the community.”

Durso’s union supports a program of incentives and tax breaks to encourage development of supermarkets, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in and of itself. But, what his statement said could easily be taken to further ends than mere tax breaks. If we cannot expect businesses to serve the public, what is left if not a take over of supermarkets and drug stores by government?

Imagine the big government aspect of this sort of idea? Big brother responsible for feeding us? What would follow, of course, would be price fixing and rationing once price fixing began to negatively affect the market. Ah, but the union thugs would have life easy if this all happened. After all, one apparently cannot be fired from a government job!

Once again the lesson is that unions are antithetical to the public weal, wholly detrimental to good government.

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