It's time for grocery employers to walk their talk

March 29, 2007

“As employees, we work extremely hard all year to ensure our employers’ success.

Now it’s their opportunity to show us how important we’ve been to the success of their enterprises.”

Michael Ashlock, QFC #801 (Roosevelt), Night Crew

Safeway, Albertsons, and Kroger (which owns Fred Meyer and QFC) rank among the 50 richest companies in the nation, according to Fortune Magazine, which made its Fortune 500 a household name.

Kroger Chairman David Dillon said recently, “Our associates’ commitment will continue to enable us to deliver the service and value our customers expect.”

Dillon and Safeway’s CEO, Steve Burd, have both made public claims that their financial success is due to the commitment of the workers. We agree: union members’ dedicated performance on the job earns strong customer loyalty and solid profit margins.

These companies talk a good game — but actions speak louder than words. It’s time for these profitable companies to deliver on their commitments at the bargaining table.

The Employers’ First Non‑Economic Proposals

At our last bargaining session, the employers told us they wanted to establish a tone of mutual respect, but their first non-economic proposals told a different story.

Below are some highlights of what they proposed. Just because they put these proposals on the table doesn’t mean they’re going into our contract. We’re still very early in the process, and there’s a lot of bargaining ahead of us.

The employers’ proposals include:

• Make it harder for employees in new stores to join the union.
• Take away 5 holidays and convert them to paid personal days. This would eliminate holiday pay and time-and-a-half pay on every holiday but Thanksgiving and Christmas.
• Eliminate overtime after 8 hours worked in a day.
• Expand Courtesy Clerk duties to include stocking shelves.
• Expand Helper Clerk classification to include checking on an “emergency basis” — without guarantees of Appendix A clerk pay — and allow an increase in Helper Clerk hours.
• Take away our right to stand together with fellow union members by honoring picket lines.
• No Sunday pay for new hires. Sunday pay is an “outdated” concept, they told us, because Sundays are like any other day.
• Eliminate evening and night premiums for new hires.

It looks like they’re trying one of the oldest negotiating tricks in the book: put a lot of junk on the table to try and distract us from our own proposals to improve working conditions. But their old tricks aren’t going to work this year.

The Employers’ Response

At our first bargaining session, we put forward a detailed non-economic proposal to address scheduling, sick leave, and other issues of fairness on the job. At Wednesday’s session, the employers offered their initial responses.

How did they respond? In a word, they said “no.”

Their responses to our proposals included:

• No to allowing employees to select shifts by seniority. The employers prefer to continue letting managers pick and choose which hours we work.
• No to sick leave on the first day of an illness. They claim only a few employees would use their days for sick leave, and the rest of us would use it all as if it were vacation.
• No to 15-minute breaks. They claim breaks take longer than 10 minutes already, and adding 5 more minutes would cost the companies an “exceptional” amount of money.
• No to eliminating mandatory work on Christmas Day and no to double-time pay for hours worked on Christmas.
• No to improving the vacation schedule.
• No to shared sick leave.
• No to changing funeral leave to bereavement leave.
• No to reasonable grounds for drug testing — even for paper cuts or carpal tunnel injuries.
• They even said no to posting all job openings in the stores.

The employers did agree to a few minor changes. They agreed to fix the jury duty language so that employees can’t be made to work a full day after serving on a jury for a full day. They agreed to let an employee’s birthday be a floating holiday. And they agreed to add step-parents to funeral leave. But that’s about it for now.

However, this is just the employers’ first response.

We know our proposals are worth fighting for. And we know that as negotiations continue — and we continue to take action together — we have the power to make their responses change.

Wages & Benefits Up Soon

We have proposed a number of non-economic improvements that have serious impacts on our lives, and we are going to continue to push the employers to address these issues before skipping to major economic issues.

Negotiations continue next week.

We won’t be distracted from our efforts, and we will continue to take action together to improve the quality of life for grocery workers.

Talk to a steward or your Union Rep about how to get involved.