As she winds down her decade on the Seattle City Council, Kshama Sawant is rallying around a workers rights fight at PCC grocery markets as she attempts to lay the groundwork for a national “Workers Strike Back” campaign. A press release from her City Council office says the councilmember will join a group of PCC workers at the company’s downtown location Monday afternoon:
Councilmember Kshama Sawant (District 3, Central Seattle), chair of the Seattle City Council’s Sustainability and Renters’ Rights Committee, will join the workers at PCC Community Markets for a press conference Monday morning, March 13, 2023. The workers, who are members of UFCW Local 3000, will expose poor working conditions, highlight their concrete demands, and announce a rank-and-file organizing effort at PCC stores across the Seattle area. Poor conditions for PCC workers were significantly worsened by the pandemic, and then further exacerbated when City Council Democrats rescinded the $4 per hour pandemic hazard pay late last year. The press conference will be followed by an informational picket outside the Downtown PCC to begin gathering community support. PCC workers’ contract expires later this year.
The city press release says Sawant and the PCC workers will be joined “by activists from Workers Strike Back, an independent movement launched by Sawant and her organization, Socialist Alternative.”
CHS reported here on the January announcement from Sawant that she would not seek reelection to focus Socialist Alternative’s efforts on the formation of the new national effort.
Meanwhile, Sawant has been busy on the legislative front with efforts that dovetail with the Workers Strike Back cause including winning protections against caste discrimination in the workplace that could become a model for cities across the country.
While Sawant’s press conference Monday will take place at the downtown PCC, the cooperative opened a location within Sawant’s District 3 at 23rd and Union in the summer of 2020.
The actions this week come on the anniversary of a major milestone in Sawant’s political career. This week in 2013, the Seattle Central and Seattle University economics professor included a promise of a fight for a $15 minimum wage in announcing she would take on incumbent Richard Conlin for his seat on the Seattle City Council.
With Sawant’s announced exit from City Hall, a wide open field has already attracted nine candidates vying to replace her.
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Incredibly happy to hear this. PCC exploits their workers In terrible working conditions and is anything but an actual cooperative when it comes to how they treat employees. They are 100% in it for profit
Why do we give this moron press?
Honestly, this is so on-brand for Sawant it’s almost laughable.
1. Attack your friends, allies, and neighbors. (Bonus points if they’ve dedicated their lives to doing good in the world.)
2. Find their faults
3. Rub it in their faces
4. Call them childish and cruel names
It’s SO much easier to attack and demoralize fellow liberals rather than take all that energy and fight the real evils: far-right Republicans. But the and her minions would never have the guts.
You are joking right the real enemy in Seattle is almost zero population of “far right” whipping boys you can use to delude yourself and deflect from the failures of the Seattle politicians you vote for? Many of the city’s enemies are far leftists and moderate normal folks need to resist them not the liberals can’t criticize each other line.
Anything Sawant supports, I am against. She is 100% about causing noise that she then can fundraise from.