Some Store Workers Giving Up the Fight:
Angry, Broke or Tired, They will Never Return to Old Jobs
Los Angeles Times
By Melinda Fulmer and Ronald D. White
Jo Ann Behrens spent her last day in the grocery business bundled up against the winter chill on a picket line in Riverside.
She had been pulling eight-hour shifts in the Ralphs parking lot for too long. "I would come home and just go to bed," she said recently. "It was hard for me."
So, after 29 years as a checker, she decided to join her husband, Jerry, a former Ralphs service manager who called it quits in November. She filed her retirement papers Feb. 1 and went out for one last day on the line. Her friends tried to make it special, tying balloons to her picket sign, autographing it and taking pictures.
"I said, 'I feel bad telling you guys that I'm leaving,' " the 55-year-old mother of two recalled. "But they said, 'No, no, don't feel that way. At least you get to go.' "…
…"If significant numbers of workers don't return, it could have an impact in the stores," said Harley Shaiken, a professor specializing in labor issues at UC Berkeley. "It will leave a bit of a sour taste with the shoppers who had a relationship with those workers. It will be a lingering reminder of the length and bitterness of the strike."…
Source: UC Berkeley in the News
11:22:22 AM 
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