| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 19, 2002 |
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Civil Disobedience Campaign Grows at Shaw's Kim Bobo, the Executive Director of the National Interfaith Committee on Worker Justice, declared today before her arrest at a Worcester-area Shaw's store, "The God we serve demands truth and justice for workers." In response to Bobo's call for justice, Shaw's management had her arrested and charged with trespassing. Arrested with Bobo were Susan Phillips, a leader of the UFCW, Kathy Cassavant, a leader of the Massachusett's AFL-CIO, and Cherie Acqulina, a local UFCW representative. The four women took arrests in order to challenge Shaw's unilateral denial of a voice for workers at 11 supermarkets in central Massachusetts. They were charged with trespassing, arrested, taken away in leg shackles and handcuffs and were arraigned in Worcester District Court. The women of labor and faith targeted health care costs as a primary issue in the struggle at the British owned food retailer. Shaw's threatened to nearly triple workers' family health care costs in order to suppress support for the union. According to Phillips, "Shaw's threatened the children, the families of their own workers, with excessive, unnecessary and unaffordable increases in the workers' health care costs." A union health care plan would have reduced Shaw's insurance cost by 14%. Workers could have had lower costs under the union plan. Full-time Shaw's workers in other areas of Massachusetts pay a maximum of $5.00 a week for family coverage under a union plan. The four women entered the Shaw's store in Auburn, Massachusetts to distribute information to women workers on the facts about health care costs. The women leaders made a special appeal to other women as workers and consumers. "As women, we have the power. We control both sides of the cash register. We are the cashiers on one side---and we are the customers on the other side. If we join hands across the cash register, we can change the economic future of women," said Phillips. The arrest of the women was the third in a series of arrests at Shaw's stores. Today's arrest marks a new phase in the fight for workers' rights at Shaw's. Women community and religious leaders are leading the fight. |
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