Your Rights During Flooding and Extreme Weather Events

Once again UFCW 3000 members and communities are facing some extreme fall and winter weather, including recent flooding. It is important to remember that if you, your family, or your coworkers have been affected by extreme weather, you have rights at work, resources through your union, and the support of your community.

Important rights and resources for UFCW 3000 members if your workplace, home, or transportation routes are flooded or evacuated:

1. Just cause protections at work: With a union contract, you have “just cause” protection, meaning you should not be disciplined at work for reasonably having to deal with a circumstance outside of your control like a flood that affects your home, work, or commute to work

   • Be clear in communicating with your employer if you are unable to report to work on time or at all due to flooding or other extreme weather

   • Make sure to invoke your right to union representation if you are called into a meeting that could lead to discipline (we call these “Weingarten Rights,” read more here)

2. The right to a safe workplace: If you feel unsafe at work, report any safety concerns to your worksite safety committee & management right away, and get support from your Shop Steward and/or Union Rep if your concerns are not addressed

3. Union resources: If your home or work is affected by flooding or extreme weather and financial assistance would help, speak with your Union Rep about the UFCW 3000 Membership Assistance Fund

4. Mutual aid: As union members, we know standing together and supporting each other is how we really make a difference. If you have ideas for ways to connect with or support fellow UFCW 3000 members in need, talk to a Shop Steward and/or your Union Rep for help with organizing

Extreme weather is dangerous in our workplaces and our communities, which is why UFCW 3000 members, including our Climate Justice Advisory Board, work for climate policies that will help protect us and our future health.

Unions Win Order Against MultiCare Payroll Deductions

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Seattle — Last month, a judge in King County Superior Court handed down an order that said MultiCare cannot deduct money from workers who were temporarily overpaid without an express agreement from the individual employee. The alleged overpayments related to an extended outage of the employer’s timekeeping system.

SEIU Healthcare 1199NW, UFCW 3000 and the Washington State Nurses Association filed suit against MultiCare after the healthcare system announced it had overpaid workers and was going to recover the overpayments by deducting amounts of their choosing from subsequent paychecks without the permission of the worker. The unions argued the law didn’t permit MultiCare to do that. The court agreed with the unions, and MultiCare was ordered to stop deductions unless it had an agreement with the individual member.

The Washington State Nurses Association, SEIU Healthcare 1199NW and UFCW 3000 filed a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) in March to prevent MultiCare Health System from garnishing wages without employees’ consent in order to recover alleged overpayments while the case made its way through the court system.

This legal win will make a world of difference to dozens of workers who were facing drastic deductions from their checks. It would have meant not being able to pay rent or mortgage or keep food on the table if MultiCare had been allowed to proceed with the deductions.

These legal actions are intended to ensure that employees have a fair, transparent, and collaborative process for establishing repayment plans, including an opportunity to challenge MultiCare’s accounting and have a say in their individual repayment plans. Under federal labor law, MultiCare must bargain with the unions to ensure a fair procedure for any repayments.

BACKGROUND

In December 2021, timekeeping software provider Kronos was hit by a ransomware attack, shutting the system down for many employers that use it. During the time Kronos was offline, MultiCare chose to duplicate employees’ last accurate timesheet for payroll purposes.

Employees continued to track hours separately outside of Kronos, but paychecks for four pay periods were based on the first pay period in December.

MultiCare knew from the start that this would result in inaccurate paychecks during the outage, as healthcare worker hours vary, sometimes significantly, week to week. Notably, the period of outage covered the worst months of the Omicron surge, during which employees saw significant upheaval in their schedules.

Following Kronos’ recovery, MultiCare announced that it would begin deducting up to $500 per paycheck without employee consent beginning March 18. MultiCare gave workers a March 9 deadline to request alternate payment plans but did not offer an option to repay by any means other than paycheck deductions, and the lowest amount offered was 10% of the amount allegedly owed per pay period. At the same time, MultiCare has not provided transparent accounting for its claimed overpayments (or underpayments), and numerous workers have reported inaccuracies in the accounting provided to them.

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UFCW Locals Applaud Actions of Attorneys General to Protect Workers and Consumers Impacted by Albertsons Proposed $4 Billion Payout

UFCW 5 - UFCW 7 - UFCW 324 - UFCW 367 - UFCW 770 - UFCW 3000 - Teamsters 38

 For immediate release: October 26, 2022
Contact: Tom Geiger, 206-604-3421

In part of the proposed merger announced by Kroger and Albertsons less than two weeks ago, the companies buried that Albertsons is planning a $4 billion payout to shareholders. Today, six Attorneys General including CA and WA pushed back on Albertsons to protect workers and consumers by demanding the companies stop the issuance of the special dividend until regulatory review of the merger is complete.

We expect the CEOs to respond positively to the Attorneys General by the end of the day on Friday and stop the issuance of the special dividend. Any effort to rush this payment threatens thousands of jobs of essential grocery store workers and millions of shoppers who would suffer from reduced competition, reduced choice and increased costs in markets across the United States. 

We applaud Attorneys General Ferguson (WA), Bonta (CA), and Racine (DC) for their leadership and action to protect workers and consumers in our state.

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Essential Grocery Store Workers Say: Stop Albertsons’ Dividend Payment

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 22, 2022
Contact: Tom Geiger, 206-604-3421
Union members and leaders available for media interviews

Seattle, WA – On the heels of the proposed merger between grocery giants Kroger and Albertsons, on Tuesday, Albertsons announced that it will pay out a $4 billion dividend to shareholders November 7, 2022. The 64,000+ hard-working members of UFCW 3000, UFCW 367 and Teamsters 38 strongly oppose this dividend payout and are calling upon elected officials and regulators to stop this payment and the resulting devaluation of the company at a time when consumers are facing crushing inflation.

“Taking billions in assets out of a company that is running well, employs hundreds of thousands of essential workers, and provides daily necessities for millions of customers is a bad idea for the workers as well as customers,” said Joe Mizrahi, Secretary Treasurer of UFCW 3000. “That $4 billion could be much-better spent to lower prices of food for consumers facing unprecedented levels of inflation, pay workers more or invest in safer stores for workers and customers. Our essential grocery store members will do everything we can to stop Albertsons from squeezing workers and customers to the bone to shower executives and shareholders with billions.”

UFCW is looking to regulators and elected officials to join us in putting public pressure on Albertsons to invest this $4 billion in workers and lower prices for families, rather than enriching executives and shareholders.

“Our stores are already underfunded,” said longtime grocery store worker Kyong Barry who works at the South Auburn Safeway/Albertsons store in Washington State and is a member of UFCW 3000. “Albertsons just wants to pay out stockholders and bosses instead of investing in workers like me or keeping our stores safer for customers. Paying $4 billion to stockholders is ridiculous when skyrocketing food prices are forcing people in our communities to go hungry. Albertsons should be lowering prices instead of padding our bosses’ pockets.”

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UFCW 3000 Stands in Solidarity with the Members of Local 555 in Bend, Oregon After Safeway Shooting

The 50,000 members of UFCW 3000 stand in solidarity with the members of UFCW local 555 who are mourning the killing of grocery store workers in Bend. All workers, including those of us in grocery stores, deserve a safe place to do our jobs.

We urge all who would like to learn more to read the statement issued by UFCW local 555.

Release: Unions File for Temporary Restraining Order Against MultiCare

FOR RELEASE: Tuesday, March 15, 2022

Seattle— The Washington State Nurses Association, SEIU Healthcare 1199NW and UFCW 3000 filed for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) to prevent MultiCare Health System from garnishing wages without employees’ consent to recover alleged overpayments related to an extended outage of the employer’s timekeeping system.

Unions assert that MultiCare's plan violates WAC 296-126-030, which states that private employers can only recover overpayments by deducting money from paychecks without consent if the overpayment is discovered and the employer “implements a plan” to recover it within 90 days. Crucially, the overpayment must have been “infrequent,” “inadvertent,” and the employer must provide “documentation” of the disputed amount.

The unions are further requesting a declaratory judgment that the deductions would violate the WAC rule, and separately have filed unfair labor practice charges and requested a 10(j) injunction from the NLRB, as MultiCare did not notify WSNA, SEIU or UFCW or bargain over its repayment plans before implementing them.

These legal actions are intended to ensure that employees have a fair, transparent and collaborative process for establishing repayment plans, including an opportunity to challenge MultiCare’s accounting and a say in their individual repayment plans.

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BACKGROUND 

In December 2021, timekeeping software provider Kronos was hit by a ransomware attack, shutting the system down for many employers that use it. During the time Kronos was offline, MultiCare chose to duplicate employees’ last accurate timesheet for payroll purposes. Employees continued to track hours separately outside of Kronos, but paychecks for four pay periods were based on the first pay period in December.

MultiCare knew from the start that this would result in inaccurate paychecks during the outage, as health care worker hours vary, sometimes significantly, week to week. Notably, the period of outage covered the worst months of the Omicron surge, during which employees saw significant upheaval in their schedules. 

Following Kronos’ recovery, MultiCare announced that it would begin deducting up to $500 per paycheck without employee consent beginning March 18. MultiCare gave workers a March 9 deadline to request alternate payment plans, but did not offer an option to repay by any means other than paycheck deductions, and the lowest amount offered was 10% of the amount allegedly owed per pay period. At the same time, MultiCare has not provided transparent accounting for its claimed overpayments (or underpayments), and numerous workers have reported inaccuracies in the accounting provided to them.

RELEASE: WA Health Care Workers Call On Hospitals To Mitigate the Staffing Crisis

FOR RELEASE: Oct. 19, 2021

WA Health Care Workers Call On Hospitals To Mitigate the Staffing Crisis

Short-sighted and costly stopgap measures are only a bandaid; Hospitals have the tools and resources to alleviate burnout nightmare

SEATTLE -- With increasing volume, hospital administrators across Washington have joined health care workers and the unions that represent them in calling attention to the unprecedented staffing crisis. But today, nurses and other frontline workers are calling on hospitals to use the tools and resources they have available to finally begin mitigating this crisis for workers and patients.

“We’ve heard near-unanimous agreement around the problem,” said Julia Barcott, a critical care nurse in Toppenish and WSNA union leader. “That’s great. But only one voice in this conversation has the ability to immediately begin fixing this problem, and that’s the hospitals. It’s past time we saw meaningful action and policy changes from them, for the sake of our frontline workers and for patients and families across the state.”

There are a number of policies hospital administrations could immediately enact that would help begin to alleviate some of the burnout on nurses and improve conditions for workers and patients, including:

Ending mandatory overtime policies and ensuring workers can safely take rest breaks to return to compliance with already-existing state law

• Retention bonuses for frontline workers who have stayed on the job, which would ostensibly help offset hospitals’ apparent need for massive signing bonuses for new staff

• Incentive pay for burned-out workers who take on additional shifts

• Incentive pay and appropriate orientation for workers who take on extra work or shifts in a department they don’t work in

• Posting enough positions in all job categories to achieve safe staffing levels

• Actively working to fill all open positions

“We’re asking for just compensation and recognition for the work we’ve all been doing and the fact we’ve stayed on the job,” said Tracy Mullen, a nurse in the emergency department at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle and member of SEIU Healthcare 1199NW. “Imagine spending the entirety of this pandemic at the bedside, and the person next to you is a traveling nurse making upwards of three- to four-times as much while the hospital apparently can’t find resources for retention bonuses or incentive pay.”

To understand the magnitude of the current staffing crisis, it’s critical to understand that a staffing shortage in Washington hospitals persisted long before the pandemic. For years, health care workers and their unions have warned our state’s hospitals about short-staffing and the potentially dire consequences. Had hospitals taken action to address adequate staffing years ago, we wouldn’t be facing such an extreme shortage now while we battle this pandemic. COVID exacerbated this already strained infrastructure, and hospitals’ response to the pandemic — including slowly filling open positions, falling back on mandatory overtime, and spending resources on signing bonuses and traveling positions rather than existing staff retention — has only worsened this preexisting shortage and led to massive burnout among workers.

“Large signing bonuses, filling positions with traveling staff, asking the federal government for emergency staff capacity — all of these are stopgap measures,” said Faye Guenther, president of UFCW 21. “You won’t reduce the need for these expensive, short-term fixes until you address the underlying problems causing burned-out health care workers to leave the bedside. In the long run the only way we’re going to see this crisis start to get better for workers and patients is for hospitals to step up and apply even a portion of that energy and those resources towards making the day-to-day working conditions of their nurses and other staff manageable.”

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About SEIU Healthcare 1199NW

SEIU Healthcare 1199NW is a union of nurses and healthcare workers with over 30,000 caregivers throughout hospitals, clinics, mental health, skilled home health and hospice programs in Washington state and Montana. SEIU Healthcare 1199NW’s mission is to advocate for quality care and good jobs for all.

About WSNA 

WSNA is the leading voice and advocate for nurses in Washington state, providing representation, education and resources that allow nurses to reach their full professional potential and focus on caring for patients. WSNA represents more than 19,000 registered nurses for collective bargaining who provide care in hospitals, clinics, schools and community and public health settings across the state. 

About UFCW 21 

UFCW 21 is working to build a powerful union that fights for economic, political and social justice in our workplaces and our communities. We represent over 45,000 workers in retail, grocery stores, health care, and other industries in Washington state.

UFCW 21 Mourns with Our Fellow UFCW Members in Tennessee

At UFCW 21, we are standing with our UFCW siblings in Tennessee who experienced a shooting in their Kroger workplace this afternoon that injured at least a dozen people. We don’t have all the information, but we are in touch with UFCW Local 1529 to offer solidarity and support as they deal with the impacts of this heinous incident of workplace violence.

This is at least the second mass shooting in a grocery store this year, and we know many grocery store workers and other workers are concerned about workplace violence. Everyone deserves a safe workplace, and we are committed to addressing workplace safety so everyone can work without fear of injury or violence.

If there are ways to offer direct mutual aid to our fellow union members in Tennessee, we will share that information as soon as we have it. If you are interested in organizing around workplace safety, please get in touch.

UFCW 21 Opposes Seattle Charter Amendment 29

UFCW 21’s executive board announces our opposition to Seattle Charter Amendment 29 with this public statement:

“Dealing with our region’s housing crisis is a top priority for UFCW 21 members, many of us frontline workers who have experienced housing insecurity and interact daily with customers and patients who are underserved by current housing and mental health systems. But sweeping unhoused people from one place to the next is a waste of city resources, degrading to our unhoused neighbors, and an ineffective solution to a systemic problem. Real solutions will put affordable housing first, refrain from criminalizing homelessness, and invest in racial and economic equity. Charter Amendment 29, calling itself 'Compassion Seattle,' does none of this and we condemn its attempt to write a policy of encampment sweeps into our city’s founding document for years to come. We urge Seattleites NOT to sign the petition for Charter Amendment 29.”

-Jeannette Randall, UFCW 21 Executive Board Member

UFCW 21 Endorses Council Member González for Seattle Mayor

For Immediate Release: Monday 4/12/21 | Contact: Tom Geiger, UFCW 21, 206-604-3421

SEATTLE, WA —  Today, UFCW 21, the region’s largest labor union, announced its endorsement of Council Member Lorena González for Seattle Mayor. The working partnership with our worker-led union goes back nearly a decade —  a decade of both great progress and great strife for working people in our city. The Mayor of Seattle can be a major force for leading change and our belief is that González is the best candidate for our city and that she will help meet the potential to reduce inequity, reduce racial injustice, and improve the rights and daily lives of working people. UFCW 21 has been at the center of efforts for over a decade to forward workers’ rights and lead the nation.

González reacted to the news: “I’m proud to have the support of UFCW 21's 46,000 hard-working members. Their workers are vital to our city's economy and have been on the front lines during the COVID-19 pandemic. I'm proud to have worked with UFCW 21 on the city council to establish the Office of Labor Standards, protect workers from scheduling instability and to provide hazard pay for grocery store workers during the pandemic. As Seattle's next Mayor, I will continue to work with our essential workers to ensure the safety and health of working people and to create good-paying jobs."

Our city was one of the first to pass a dramatically higher minimum wage, paid sick days, secure scheduling, and most recently hazard pay for essential grocery store workers. González has been there with us all along the way, providing savvy, principled and progressive leadership.

"Council Member González was a great partner in the fight for the Secure Scheduling law to help us have more control over our schedules at work and to better plan time with family. As a grocery store worker and elected board member of UFCW 21, I'm very happy she has our full support to become Seattle's next mayor," said Maggie Breshears who works at Fred Meyer in Greenwood.

"Last year, after continued problems and the Seattle Police Officers Guild’s refusal to meet community demands for major police reform and accountability, UFCW 21 heard the community’s demands, and we took a leadership role in the Labor community and fought for and succeeded at having SPOG removed from the MLK Labor Council.  Everyone, people of all races and economic levels need police justice and should have equal access to that justice in our communities. Seattle has a lot of work to do along these lines and we feel Council Member González can help lead that work as Mayor," said Sam Dancy, a longtime QFC worker in West Seattle and elected Executive Board member of UFCW 21.

As an at-large member of the council, González has been elected by voters across the city. And as an attorney and advocate, she has a long record of caring, action and success for the working people of the city and beyond. Her own story combines the hard struggle of an immigrant family, a farmworker family. She understands firsthand the trials of racism, the inequality in our economy, as well as the benefits of getting a strong public education and the importance of getting organized and involved in community.

Statement from UFCW 21 President Faye Guenther and Secretary Treasurer Joe Mizrahi on today’s assaults on the capitols in Olympia and Washington, D.C.

“We call on all elected leaders to finish what they started and certify the 2020 presidential election. Hate groups, lies purposely spread by certain elected officials, tantrums and riots fueled by false conspiracy theories and racism will not derail democracy. We are one when it comes to protecting our democracy, our Constitution, and each other.

We believe in the democratic process, in our union and in our country. The people voted. Biden won. And today, Warnock and Ossoff won in Georgia. That is how you take the halls of congress. That is how democracy works. The people have spoken.

We are thankful our elected officials are safe, including Governor Inslee and our longtime ally Representative Jayapal, who was in the House Gallery today. We will not tolerate bullies here or in Washington D.C.”

-UFCW 21 President Faye Guenther and Secretary Treasurer Joe Mizrahi