Wal-Mart making big push into Southern California grocery market

[SoCalDem]

10. Gotta kill off the few union grocery stores left out here.

The merger-mania of the 90's pretty much did in most of them, but Walmart/Target/etc won't rest until ALL food-commercial workers are non-union $9.00 hr workers..with no pension/benefits..

It's the "new" way

When we moved out here in 1982, our little town had about 30K people in it and we had:

Safeway
Food 4 Less
Ralphs (2 of them)
Stater Brothers (2 of them)
Lucky
Smith's
Alpha Beta
Von's Pavillion

and we had 3 pretty good sized independent grocery stores too..

Now we have

3 Stater Bros
1 Ralphs (on its last legs)
2 run down Food 4 Less(es)
We now have a Fiesta, 2 Cardenas, a Superior..(all catering mostly to a hispanic clientele)
These independent ones have taken over some of the empty buildings left behind in the chaotic take-over frenzy.

And we now have over 150K population..

The same happened with banks

"back in the day" we had:

First Interstate
Security Pacific
Wells Fargo
Household bank
B of A
Great Western
Home Savings
California Bank
Cal Fed
Crocker Bank

and 3 or 4 smaller "hometown" style banks (like the one we still have and is MY bank ..Provident Bank)

Now we have Wells Fargo..Chase & B of A