Price Strike
When I was a kid, I walked a picket line. It was the Long Island Meat Strike, a period during which the supermarkets were jacking up prices on meat and housewives across Long Island were galvanized to find out just what was going on and to achieve some measure of fairness. It achieved some measure of national stature, including a Congressional hearing, and one incident in which a farmer shipped a calf to the leader of the strike, saying, here, you raise it, see how much it costs and how much you get back when it's steaks. The leader of the strike adopted the little doggie (as a motherless calf is known), until re-homing it to an upstate farm, where it could live out its life. (It probably did end up as food, I suppose.)

Anyway, one of the significant outcomes of the strike was to require that all supermarkets provide unit pricing. This is a scheme whereby every consumer good on the shelf had a label expressing its purchase price, but also a shelf tag that provided comparative value, i.e., price per ounce. This allowed the shoppers to calculate relative value. This jar of mustard was 8.33 and this was 9.85, but the first was 10 ounces and the second 12.5. While it would be easy enough to calculate the differential, this was in the days before hand-held calculators, so many people were left with making their decision simply on which price was lower, even when that meant they ultimately paid more for an equivalent product.

The Australian Retailers Association to claim that mandatory unit pricing won't bring down prices is simply - no, scratch that - it's deliberately disingenuous. They are lying to you. It won't achieve an immediate effect on prices - or any, it's true - unless we consumers use unit pricing to our own advantage. Look at the unit pricing and buy the less expensive but comparable option. If there are two organic olive oils on the shelf and one gives you a unit price-based advantage, buy that one. Same same for everything else. Compare and save, as so many discount shops advise. Back in NYC, Sym's, the discount clothing retailer, advises: an educated consumer is our best customer; same principle applies.

Yes, let's get this done, Australia - nearly forty years after we achieved the same victory in New York, and ultimately across the nation, thanks to a decent Congress at the time. We need it, and we deserve it.

Meat Strike! Meat Strike! Meat Strike!
Union! Union! Union!