Contract talks between Puget Sound workers and four major grocery store chains will begin next week, close on the heels of a five-month work stoppage in California that involved many of the same unions, stores and issues.
The first meeting will be April 2 between representatives of five United Food and Commercial Workers union locals and Allied Employers, an industry group representing Albertson’s, and Safeway and the Kroger-owned grocery chains – Fred Meyer and QFC.
The two sides are expected to set a schedule for talks at that meeting. The union’s contract will expire May 2.
Only workers at a half-dozen south Snohomish County stores represented by UFCW’s Local 1105 will be directly affected by these talks. Workers at the rest of the stores are members of the Teamsters union and work under a different contract that doesn’t expire until August.
But this spring’s contract talks will likely set the standard for the agreement the Snohomish County Teamsters will be offered come summertime, said Randy Zeiler, Allied’s lead negotiator.
In all, the talks this spring and summer will affect 18,000 union workers at 265 stores in King, Kitsap, Mason, Pierce, Snohomish and Thurston counties, Zeiler said.
UFCW workers in California went back to work earlier this month after a 20-week strike and lockout that involved Albertson’s, Kroger and Safeway.
The strike was bruising. Kroger said it resulted in the chain losing 45 cents a share for the quarter ending Jan. 31, after it had profits of 50 cents a share in the same period last year. Profits at Albertson’s dropped to 35 cents a share from 54 cents the year before.
The key issue was health benefits. Management said it could no longer afford the no-premium insurance plans the unions won in previous negotiations, given the increasing competition from nonunion grocers.
The unions, on the other hand, weren’t willing to give back the benefits, saying many of its members – particularly those not working full-time – couldn’t afford health care without them.
The strike took on political overtones, with apparent Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry joining workers on the picket lines, and national labor leaders pledging to make affordable health care an issue in this fall’s elections.
The contract settled on by California workers created a two-tier system under which new hires will get slower raises and will have to contribute toward their health care.
Workers here won’t accept that deal, UFCW leaders said in a recent joint statement.
“We believe that the proposal in California goes too far and will be unacceptable to our members,” they said. Union workers are prepared to “do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to protect affordable health care,” they added.
But Zeiler said the cost of providing the health benefits is soaring by an average of 37 percent a year. The employers paid an average of $2.94 an hour for the benefits when the current contract was signed in May 2001, only to see it climb to $4.80 an hour in January of this year.
Zeiler said he’s optimistic of reaching a contract without a work stoppage. The California lockout/walkout was “an aberration,” he said, and in most parts of the country, the two sides have been able to come to terms.
Representatives of the Teamsters and UCFW were not available for comment last week.
But in a newsletter sent to members, the unions said that the companies’ California proposals would “mean the end of affordable health benefits for all grocery workers.”
The unions have launched radio advertisements criticizing Safeway for its role in what the newsletter called “trying to effectively eliminate health benefits.”
Zeiler criticized the unions for “clamoring for a strike.”
Reporter Bryan Corliss: 425-339-3454 or corliss@heraldnet.com.
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