UFCW 21 - A Voice for Working America

New Agreement Protects Health & Pension Plans, and Improves Wages

December 2010 — In several votes this month, grocery store workers across the Puget Sound cast ballots by overwhelming margins — more than 90% — to ratify a new three-year agreement that sets standards for wages, benefits, and working conditions.

The big chain grocery stores came into negotiations this year proposing serious cuts to nearly every part of the contract. But grocery store workers across Puget Sound repeatedly took action and stood up together over the nine months of contract negotiations that led to this agreement. Our fight for a fair contract was on the front page of many newspapers, and heard in dozens of TV and radio stories. (Check out the December 6th KPLU story.) We won broad support from community organizations, other labor unions, and customers.

We were on the brink of a strike, which would have been the first in this region since 1989. But after an overwhelming vote to authorize a strike against the big chains — Safeway, Fred Meyer, QFC, and Albertsons — we were finally able to turn back the employers' efforts to gut our contract and to reach an agreement that protects benefits and improves wages.

“This shows how regular working people – when they stand together – can make their boss sit down and agree to a reasonable compromise. They wanted to use the tough economy as an excuse to cut our pay and benefits, but we didn’t let them. We secured a better future for ourselves and our families.” —Tasha West-Baker, UFCW 21 member and Safeway worker

A Long Campaign — That Gets Results

Workers began to bargain a new contract in mid-March, and the original contract expiration for workers in King, Snohomish, Kitsap, and north Mason counties was back in May. Thousands upon thousands of workers took action over the long campaign, with buttons, stickers, action meetings, the Grocery Store Workers Bill of Rights, and more.

By mid-October we had held actions in every single one of the 200+ big chain stores in the area, but the employers were still proposing severe cuts to pay, severe cuts to health and pension benefits, and severe cuts to our working conditions. The time had come to vote.

In mid-November, workers voted by 94% to reject the employers' proposal and authorize a strike. Days after the results were announced, the employers and the union member bargaining team went back into negotiations. As TV reporters warned of a possible strike over Thanksgiving, customers, community organizations, and other unions showed strong support for our campaign. The union member bargaining team met with the employers for three consecutive days of bargaining, and finally, just before midnight on November 20th, we  reached a tentative agreement that we could recommend.

“We work hard for these companies, but they were trying to use the tough economy to gut our pay and benefits. But because we stuck together, we showed them we weren’t going accept that and even made some important improvements for our jobs, protected our health and pension plans, and our wages.” —Lynnette Larson, UFCW 21 Bargaining Team member and Fred Meyer worker

Highlights of Our Agreement

Reasons the Union Member Bargaining Team Recommended a Yes Vote:

1. We protected our affordable and quality health plan.
2. We secured our defined-benefit pension plan.
3. We improved our wages.
4. We improved our working conditions.
5. We built a stronger union for the future.

Our rock-solid unity defeated many very harmful employer proposals, including:

• Defeated: Underfunding our health plan
• Defeated: Adding a second-rate new health plan that all new hires would have for 3 years
• Defeated: Slashing Sunday pay and holiday pay for everyone
• Defeated: Adding an additional 2080 hours to an already long wage scale
• Defeated: Deep cuts to our pensions and elimination of the rule of 85 in meat
• Defeated: Cutting courtesy clerk pay while adding more duties
• Defeated: Substantially increasing the limitation on total helper clerk hours allowed
• Defeated: All lump sum bonuses in pay instead of any wage increases
• Defeated: Eliminating or weakening meat department work rules
• Defeated: A 4-year Fred Meyer general merchandise contract that would have divided us from grocery contract expiration

The nature of bargaining is compromise and we made some compromises to get this settlement. While we didn't get everything we wanted, the employers sure didn’t either.  We achieved this settlement because of all of us taking action and standing up together.