To the Editor:

The Stop & Shop strike is over, and after 11 days, some 31,000 workers have returned to their jobs. The union’s achievements are apparently satisfactory, but that judgement will have to await ratification by all the locals in the three states. Public support for the strike has, according to the press and observed by my visits to our Newtown picket line, been strong and sympathetic.

This strike is not insignificant nor as local in its impact as it may seem. Organized labor has been pretty quiet the past several years. Large strikes have been almost unknown.

One day back in the 1930s, when I was maybe 7, an aunt, a union organizer, took me to walk a picket line at a shoe factory north of Boston, an event that likely encouraged me to become somewhat of a student of labor history in the United States.

With Americans becoming more and more aware of the economic injustices caused by the outrageous income gaps, I’m certain we will be seeing more labor action, more strikes — encouraged surely by the strike here.

Or to put it more bluntly, “The only effective answer to organized greed is organized labor.” So spoke Thomas Donahue of the AFL-CIO Executive Council, and that was 40 years ago.

Karl Decker

692 Elm Street, Monroe         April 24, 2019