Holiday or Not, Their Place Is on Picket Line

By Dana Parsons

Nov. 28, 2003 12 AM PT

Thanksgiving Day on the picket line outside a supermarket warehouse. Probably not what the Pilgrims had in mind.

It certainly wasn’t what Larone Smith had in mind. But as we talk on the afternoon before Turkey Day, that’s where he planned to be.

“It’s one of my favorite holidays and I’d love to spend it with my family, but I’m out here fighting for them too,” he says.

His battle station during much of the seven-week strike has been an Albertsons distribution center in Brea, where he works. He’s also walked the picket line at a nearby grocery store.

In a way, Thanksgiving is just another day on the line for the pickets -- getting mad, staying cool, staying upbeat, getting down -- but, of course, it’s different.

“Normally, I’d get up with the kids [6 and 7], have breakfast with them and decide where we were going to go,” Smith says of Thanksgivings past.

Not this year. Not with his stint set to run from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. That’s nothing, however, compared to some of the 15- and 16-hour tours of duty he has pulled in recent weeks.

Gobble, gobble has become more like grumble, grumble.

“I don’t want to think so negatively, because it is Thanksgiving,” Smith says. “I want to stay positive, keep positive thoughts, and I don’t want to dwell on the fact that it is Thanksgiving, because if I do, I’ll get upset and I won’t even come out.”

That’s the kind of talk management loves to hear -- that the strikers are fed up with picketing and having their lives disrupted.

Smith, of course, will pull his shift. Nor is he predicting how or when the strike will end.

When I ask what strike leaders are saying these days, Smith says, “They haven’t said. I just take it one day at a time. You get rumors every day. I hope [the sides] go back to the table next week and they get us back to work.”

It’s no secret that pickets can get worn down psychologically from the tedium of walking the line, from not working and from the uncertainty of how things will play out. As a picket captain, Smith has additional responsibilities of “keeping my guys under control” and dealing with the police and the public.

Seven weeks into it, I ask if he’s optimistic or pessimistic.

“Right now, I’m not being either one,” he says.

Smith, 32, has worked for Albertsons for about seven years. He lugs 80-pound cases of meat that are loaded onto pallets for delivery; he says he likes the physical labor.

And, until the region’s first supermarket strike in 25 years, he’s always liked his employer. “It’s a great place to work,” he says. “I plan on retiring from there one day.”

At least, that was the plan until the strike hit the fan. “My feelings toward the company have changed,” Smith says. “I feel the way the company has treated me as a hard-working employee has totally changed.”

He explained to his two young children that Dad had sort of a new job -- carrying a picket sign. The kids kind of understood. But it’s not like Smith himself easily made the transition.

“Some days, you wake up so mad you don’t even want to go to the picket line,” he says. The anger and frustration come not if customers disagree with the strikers; only if they won’t listen to their point of view.

Such is the dynamic of labor strife.

It’s a game that strikers feel they must play. They’d just prefer not to play it on Thanksgiving Day.

“I’ve told the kids that Daddy will be on the picket line,” Smith says.

Not surprisingly, they’re a bit upset about it.

“I’ll be upset, too,” Smith says. “I’d rather be home with the kids.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821, at

[email protected] or at The Times’ Orange County edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626.