Southern California grocery workers are poised for another round in their long and bitter battle with the three mega-chains -- Kroger, SuperValu and Safeway -- that dominate the market. Four years ago, ownership locked them out during a nasty contract dispute that dragged on for almost five months.

This time, their struggle will be televised -- by Brave News Films, the production company behind Wal-Mart: the High Costs of Low Prices. "When we learned that 20,000 California children had lost their health coverage under the contract the grocery workers agreed to in 2004, it made us angry in a very basic way," said Director Robert Greenwald. "As members of the community that care about these workers, we wanted to tell the story of their fight in human terms," he told reporters Monday. Continue reading →

Filmmaker Robert Greenwald and his company Brave New Films on Monday launched a website featuring a series of videos that detail the hardships of Southern California grocery store workers. The launch of Supermarketswindle.com comes just as grocery worker union members in the region are considering a strike after cuts in pay and benefits.

"There is a David-versus-Goliath battle going on right now between the hard-working grocery store employees and the supermarket CEOs Jeffrey Noddle, David Dillon and Stephen Burd, who each make over $7 million a year," Greenwald said in a Monday statement. "This is a story that needs to be told now." Continue reading →

Grocery union supporters have teamed up with filmmaker Robert Greenwald, who took on retail giant Wal-Mart in a scathing 2005 documentary, in a bid to rally public opinion against the big-three grocery chains amid ongoing contract negotiations.

Experts say it's one sign that the United Food and Commercial Workers union has learned from the 2003-04 labor dispute and become more sophisticated on the public relations front. However, experts say, neither the union nor the grocers appear to have made a big impact on consumers during the stop-and-start talks of the past four months. Continue reading →