Grocery Bargaining Update

April 16, 2007

At our last bargaining session, the employers told us that their current policies for scheduling, sick leave, vacations, funeral leave, drug testing and other issues work just fine and no changes are needed.

We offered numerous concrete examples of how their policies negatively affect our lives. Their response was that our examples may be exceptions, and are not what they are hearing from managers.

Workplace Issues Are Family Issues

Issues like fair scheduling, longer breaks, sick leave, fair vacation policies, and bereavement leave are critical issues in the workplace and in our lives. When we fight for these issues, we’re fighting for more quality time with our families, friends and neighbors. We’re fighting to build better communities.

It shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg to call in sick. It shouldn’t be so hard to find time to take a family member to the doctor. We shouldn’t be punished for raising kids, or for being active in our communities, or for experiencing grief when a loved one dies. We’re fighting for more control of our work lives, because workplace issues are also family and community issues.

We think there are problems with the way things currently work. What do you think?

A Workplace that Works

At Wednesday’s bargaining session, Arnethia Hammick (Albertsons #473 – Burien, Deli), Karen McEntire (Safeway #464 – Bear Creek, Night Crew), and Sharon Matland (Fred Meyer #95 – Everett, CCK) talked about the disruption of working a different schedule every day, moved from the night shift to the day shift and back again. It can happen so often you get confused about whether you’re supposed to come to work at 7:00 am or 7:00 pm!

Management shouldn’t have the sole power to pick and choose what shifts we work. We should have more input and choice.

We also told the employers that when workers don’t have sick leave, they come to work sick. That’s not fair to us and it’s not fair for our customers.

We explained that sick leave, scheduling, and other non-economic issues aren’t just a “cost” for employers, or a luxury for employees—these are issues that affect our work, our families, and our communities.

Wages and Benefits Up Next

The employers gave more detail about their proposal to expand management exemptions. They say the size of the stores is so much larger, so they want a larger number of non-union positions.

They also offered to add domestic partners to our funeral leave language, but only if we dropped our request for bereavement leave and also agreed to broad new “management rights” language.

Next week, the union bargaining team will meet to finalize our proposals on wages and benefits. Then, the week after, we meet again with the employers to present those economic proposals. Look out for an update with the details after that session.

We need to make sure they take our non‑economic proposals seriously. We can help drive the process in our direction by building our Contract Action Team (CAT) of active and engaged workers in every store, every department, and every shift. Talk to a steward or your Union Rep about signing up as a CAT activist.

As negotiations begin to focus on wages and benefits, we’ll continue to emphasize our crucial non-economic proposals as well. Our employers are highly profitable—they can afford to share the success by providing us fair wages and benefits, and the quality of life we deserve.