Teamsters to leaflet at Fred Meyer
Date: August 17, 2011
To: UFCW 21 members at Fred Meyer stores
Subject: Teamsters to leaflet at Fred Meyer
Fred Meyer is trying to take away the affordable, quality health plan of over 350 Teamsters who work in the company’s warehouse in Puyallup.
Starting this weekend and for the foreseeable future, Teamster 117 members will be out front of some Fred Meyer store doing informational leafleting.
Contract talks between Teamster grocery warehouse workers and Fred Meyer broke off recently when the company refused to address its employees’ concerns over the rising cost of health care. An extension agreement between Teamsters Local 117 and Fred Meyer expired at midnight on August 15. The Union has proposed that the parties engage the assistance of a federal mediator, but no further talks are currently scheduled.
On August 6 and 7, Fred Meyer warehouse employees had voted in overwhelming numbers to authorize a strike. The contract at Fred Meyer’s distribution center in Puyallup covers 362 employees. The facility serves approximately 140 stores in Washington, Alaska and Idaho, and more stores in the Western Region.
During the term of the expired labor agreement, employees’ premium share, deductibles, and out-of-pocket maximums more than doubled. Medical benefits for Teamsters at Fred Meyer are measurably inferior and more costly as compared with the medical benefits of other Teamster workers in the grocery warehouse industry.
“The general public needs to know that Fred Meyer is putting an undue burden of medical costs on the backs of its workers and their families,” said Teamsters Local 117 Secretary-Treasurer, Tracey A. Thompson. “When huge corporations like Kroger, the owner of Fred Meyer, make hundreds of millions of dollars in profit off the backs of their workers, those corporations have an obligation to ensure that their workers have the best family medical coverage available,” she said.
UFCW 21 members know how companies like Fred Meyer are trying to push extremely more expensive and inferior health plans on us. We want our brothers and sisters at Teamsters 117 to know that we are aware of their struggle.
Keep in mind, we are not asking our Fred Meyer members to take part in these actions, but we do want everyone to be aware of what Fred Meyer is trying to do and that the Teamsters will be out front of stores coming soon.
Workers in the grocery warehouse industry perform physically demanding work under a tight production standard. They work in refrigerated and freezer warehouse environments, manually lifting and moving heavy cases, and operating forklifts and pallet jacks to receive, load and stock grocery products.
Fred Meyer is a subsidiary of Kroger, Inc., a company based in Cincinnati, Ohio. Kroger reported over $75 billion in revenue in 2010. In the first quarter of 2011, Kroger’s profits were $432.3 million, an increase of 16%. Teamsters Local 117 represents approximately 16,000 members, with over 1,000 members employed in the grocery warehouse industry.
