Fresh and Non-Union

We've seen a lot of businesses come and go at Bushard and Warner. Softwarehouse became CompUSA, which eventually went under when PCs stopped being mysteries and everyone got into retailing them. So, a good use of that large store space was getting the folks to take up residence.

Food and shelf goods retailing is a tough, competitive, low-margin business. Most of the majors, Albertsons et al (which might soon be struck by their unions), are here in FV.  F&E's proven very convenient, very fast to get in and out of with their automated checkouts and -- when Bushard isn't ripped up for yet another sewer project, the third in ten years --  easy to access by car. Plus, their bananas are cheap. My only beef with them is their good parking is reserved for cars with non-taxpaying children and "hybrids" -- a cave to the leftist global warming loons and a try at attracting the ex-hippy crowd away from being overcharged at Whole Foods.

So now the leftist sops to the union movement have come up with a way to nose into our local business by targeting F&E with a lame claim that their self-service checkouts might allow minors and drunks to buy alcohol. But of course, it matters not to those politicians who take campaign contributions from the collectives that the actual problem doesn't seem to exist. The kids apparently have better sources, but it's a great made-up premise for Fiona Ma and her Democrat minions to bring the hammer down on a private sector target and try to force them into unionizing and building manned checkouts with, of course, represented employees.

I visit F&E every few days (looking for $1-a-bag day-old bagels) and don't recall ever not seeing an employee hovering around the checkout area who wouldn't be alert enough to confront someone with a snootfull or who seemed underage and was buying booze.

When this unneeded legislation was first proposed in 2009 and passed the legislature, even Arnold Schwarznegger made a rare correct move in vetoing it, saying that no legitimate evidence existed to suggest that self-service grocery checkout stands are contributing to the theft of alcoholic beverages and sale to minors or intoxicated persons. And there's still no evidence this issue exists -- if it did, certainly Ma would've used it.

F&E's a good neighbor and welcome member of our business community. Maybe the City Council might pass a resolution in support of one of our businesses, say we've got no apparent problem with F&E's customer purchases and send it up to Sacramento through our State legislators Allan Mansoor and Tom Harman to stop the passage of this worthless bill and keep the unions out of Fountain Valley. 

If you'd like to email Assemblyman Mansoor this post, he's at assemblymember.mansoor@assembly.ca.gov, and Senator Harman's at senator.harman@senate.ca.gov.