What’s Missing in Giant Eagle’s Snack Aisle? Union-Made Potato Chips

There are two United Food and Commercial Workers Locals in PA, Local 23 in the West and Local 1776 in the East. Together they represent the State Store Workers and do legislative work as the Wine and Spirits Council. The UFCW State Store contract is the best contract for retail workers in the state and Wal-Mart Workers and Giant Eagle Workers can aspire to its wages, union rights and job security. Those locals resist any further degradation of the State Store system.

Locals 23 and 1776 are amalgamated, representing workers with hundreds of union contracts. In the West, those include the Giant Eagle Corporate contract covering about 45 Giant Eagle locations in the Pittsburgh area. In the East Local 1776 includes a fistful of snack food factories with UFCW contracts.

Given Local 23’s organizing, you would think the snack food aisle at Giant Eagle would feature choices between union and nonunion potato chips. But you won’t find union labels on any of the bags of potato chips found there. Some chips are associated with specific factories, but many, the store brands in particular, have no factory information.

Are you a worker in the potato chip or retail sector? Do you drive the trucks that are filled with our chips and arrange them on the shelves at Giant Eagle? Do you eat potato chips or have questions about industrial union organizing? Then that absence of union potato chips in Giant Eagle should be of concern to you.

One of the many activities of the Pittsburgh Anti Sweatshop Community Alliance is SPUD FEST where we eat chips and drill down on ways we might expose the potato chip supply chain in PA. Our discussion, complete with a celebration of SPUD FEST and a bag of chips, continued at the Summit Planning Meeting. We also, accompanied by a 10-pound bag of potatoes, talked over the supply chain while manning the table of the Pittsburgh Anti-Sweatshop Community Alliance during the 18th Annual Summit Against Racism.

Kenneth Miller’s article is an extension of his previous coverage of the 98th and 99th Farm Show, Giant Eagle, and The Best Major League Sweatshop Education in America. Let’s talk about Sweatshops @ PNC Park by contacting Kenneth at 412-512-1709

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