December 19, 2009 02:54 AM UTC
Grocery Workers' Split Vote Examined
7 Comments- by: richardmyers
( – promoted by Colorado Pols)
Workers facing lockout now locked in; workers still negotiating are empowered
by Richard Myers
Concession bargaining means corporations demanding that unionized workers give up benefits, rights, or wages they’ve won in previous agreements. Colorado’s grocery chains have engaged in concession bargaining for several contracts in a row.
On December 14th, Colorado grocery workers voted on a “last, best, and final” contract offer from King Soopers and Safeway that gave little that was new, and demanded some very significant concessions. The corporations both hoped and propagandized that this offer was to mark the end of their negotiations. But just as the corporations’ earlier “final” offers weren’t really final, some older workers clearly understood that corporate spin doesn’t necessarily dictate the end of the process.
Other workers may learn this lesson through experience. In spite of strong and pervasive recommendations to the contrary by Colorado’s UFCW Local 7, workers at King Soopers (division of Kroger) and their sibling subsidiary, City Market, accepted the latest offer. By doing so, these workers have locked themselves in to a new three tier wage system, absorbed very significant pension cuts and have given up a variety of pension fund-related benefits. These include death benefits; supplemental benefits; early retirement; and, controversially, disability benefits. According to the new contract’s provisions, most workers in the stores (who have not seen a raise in a number of years) will get no raise from this new contract. Indeed, entry level new hires (called courtesy clerks) will start at absolute minimum wage, and (absent a promotion) will never see a wage increase, no matter how long they hold their position with the company.
The corporations have used the savings from lowered wage rates and decreased benefits in previous contracts to remodel stores, and to build new stores.
Safeway workers rejected a nearly identical contract offer by a substantial margin.
A newly remodeled King Soopers store at 120th and Colorado Boulevard. Each remodeled King Soopers store is estimated to cost six to eight million dollars. Many workers are resentful that the company’s profits go to purchase bricks, rather than to reward the workers who make the profits possible.
After a challenging and eventful eight months of negotiations, some observers have conjectured that, concerned with competitive advantage, Safeway’s position will harden, and Safeway workers will now be forced to accept similar terms. But in my view Safeway (which took the lead in the past eight months of negotiations) has demonstrated excessive greed and stubbornness throughout. And now Safeway management seems to be alarmed about the next round of negotiations, where an opposite result is at least as likely if Safeway workers are allowed to exercise a newly-realized strength.
During the 1996 contract talks, King Soopers workers elected to strike, while the union sought to allow Safeway workers to continue working. Safeway exercised the provisions of a behind-the-scenes agreement with King Soopers, such that when the strike at King Soopers was announced, Safeway locked out their union workforce. Fierce competitors in the marketplace, the grocery chains nonetheless cooperated with each other in presenting a united front against their workers’ demands for improved wages and benefits.
What is the primary benefit to locking out the majority of Colorado’s unionized grocery workers? Strikers who walk the picket line receive strike pay from the UFCW Local’s strike fund. With a majority of union members forced to the picket line, the Local’s strike fund is more quickly depleted, forcing the union to expend resources at an unsustainable rate. The UFCW International contributes to strike pay, but Local 7 carries the greater burden.
In 2009 negotiations, the corporations have repeatedly trumpeted a similar strike/lockout plan. This time Safeway workers have taken the lead with the option to strike, and it is King Soopers workers who have been threatened with a lockout.
(In a future article I plan to explore the psychology of the lockout, and the reasons that King Soopers workers accepted a severely concessionary contract. For now, let us examine the prevailing situation.)
With King Soopers under contractual obligation, there is no longer any threat of a lockout. Indeed, the UFCW Local 7 strike fund can be re-purposed toward a more focused action, the very action that had been the Local’s goal in the first place. King Soopers workers (who may eventually benefit from successful Safeway negotiations in their own future contract talks) will continue to work and pay union dues, helping to replenish the strike fund.
Safeway corporate undoubtedly understands this, and that may explain why store managers who embrace and identify with the corporation’s financial aspirations have expressed frustration and exasperation to UFCW deputy secretaries who visit their stores. Safeway will be no less obstinate than they have been throughout negotiations, but because of the split vote Safeway now stands alone, and is in a significant bind.
Assessing The Impact Of The Split Vote
On January 1, UFCW Local 7 will have new leadership, and perhaps, new policies or tactics. Issues such as the advisability and timing of negotiations and possible new job actions will require a careful review. But workers who have voted repeatedly to reject concessionary contract offers are likely to find value in continuity and continued engagement. And these workers participate in the election of their local leadership, so they have the authority of their democratic actions.
It makes sense, then, to explore new negotiating possibilities that arise from the split vote.
King Soopers is no doubt relieved to be out of the fight. While both corporations have benefited from the recession and are profitable, Safeway has roughly half of King’s market share, and now confronts the possibility of a strike in which many shoppers will flock to their larger competitor. A thriving King Soopers may be expected to hire additional workers, thereby increasing the dues income (and therefore the strike fund) of the Local during any strike action. A supportive Executive Board (comprised of mostly new members in January of 2010) may even feel justified in examining the conservative level of strike pay set by their predecessors, possibly increasing it to support Safeway workers’ ability to sustain a strike.
Safeway’s argument for settlement will be: King Soopers workers accepted, and now it is time for Safeway workers to follow suit. Any loss of market share is potentially devastating, and therefore a strike must be avoided at all costs.
Ironically, with King Soopers workers no longer facing a lockout, Safeway workers will be able to make the same argument back to the company.
In my view Safeway workers will now have the more compelling argument because, with a more efficacious strike fund, they will have a greater ability to back up their demands. Safeway may conclude that its best interest lies in putting this dispute behind as quickly as possible, even at the cost of meeting the Safeway workers’ demands against concessions. Safeway workers must merely stick together, maintain the patience that they have demonstrated throughout negotiations, and reject any contract offer that fails to live up to their hopes and expectations.
My heart goes out to the many hundreds of King Soopers workers i have conversed with over the past six months, many of whom no doubt recognize the dire consequences of accepting the concessionary contract offer. I sincerely hope that their ordeal lasts no longer than the life of the contract they’ve accepted, and that they will be in a position to gain back some of what they’ve lost in a little over four years. An early move in that direction at Safeway would certainly bode well for the future.
Richard Myers is a deputy secretary for UFCW Local 7. A deputy secretary is responsible for communicating with, informing, and helping to educate grocery workers in the stores concerning contract-related issues.
The writer is not a spokesperson for the union, and the views expressed here are his alone.
People only want their grocery prices to be lower. It doesn’t matter what the greedy grocers pull, the shoppers aren’t getting the message.
Two weeks ago, I bought a pound of store-brand sour cream at City Market. It cost $0.99. This week, the week before Christmas, the same pound of sour cream cost $1.45. That’s a 45 percent increase.
Did labor costs go up in the last two weeks? No. It was pure greed. Kroger knows people are going to be buying stuff this week. (I won’t say “shopping,” because nobody shops for lower prices when time is tight.)
The union has a public relations problem. People don’t give a shit about bricks. They care about grocery prices. Until the union can link one to the other, they are fighting a lost cause.
…with a few unions, such as the anarcho-syndicalist unions of France and Spain, the factory expropriation communities in Argentina, or perhaps, ultimately, the Industrial Workers of the World here and elsewhere. That is because these organizations believe in the principle of workers owning their own businesses. But (as you are aware) with any capitalist enterprise, such ability rests with management, for management is directly tied to ownership.
In any event, some customers (such as myself, my family, virtually all of my co-workers, and many of my friends) try to choose the businesses that we patronize in part by the way that they treat their workers. So even though i don’t doubt a lot of people feel the way that you do, your conclusion doesn’t work for me. I routinely pay slightly higher prices if i know i’m not supporting sweatshop working conditions by doing so.
You don’t look at your job being bring maximum value to the customer. Instead you restrict yourself to the short-sighted direct measure of what’s in it for you.
The big win is when the company & employees work together to increase productivity and improve the product so that people buy more and there is increased profit/sale to divide among all.
If you follow that path, you can count on consumer’s self-interest to increase the income of your fellow union members.
Companies take advantage of high enemployment to squeeze their workers. They know that many people will “scab” to feed their families.
Frankly, I’m concerned that teabagging, and talks of states’ rights from Penry and McCinniss clearly indicate that the right wing attempt to become more accepted as mainstream has made some progress.
Unions organizing get slammed for being socialists (or thugs for wanting a non-secret ballot)in the EFCA, while gun toting right wing radicals show up at events talking of overthrowing the government get noticed by mainstream Republicans.
If leftist Democrats showed up the same way at pro Bush rallies, they’d be hauled off or arrested as terrorist sympathizers.
does that mean that you and all the other union employees will forgo your salaries and accept only strike pay if the Safeway workers walk?
Or will you continue to draw your usual salaries while they freeze their asses off picketing?
I make less than many of the workers in the stores. I don’t receive the benefits that they receive. I don’t receive a pension or health care from the union that i work for.
Many of the union staff i work with are workers from the stores who have taken leave to support negotiations. They make exactly what they made when they were in the store, and not on leave.
I can guarantee that if the Safeway workers decide to picket, i’ll do my best to be right there beside them — snow, rain, sleet, or shine.
Having said that, i would happily work for the equivalent of strike pay for the duration of a grocery workers’ strike. I think that’s a great idea to show solidarity. I expect there are legal obstacles to such an arrangement, but i’ll explore the possibilities.
But here’s another point of confusion implicit in your suggestion. Union staff doesn’t just serve just one group of workers. For example, Local 7 has 23,000 members and supports grocery workers; health care workers; packing plant workers; barbershop workers; others. Should all staff be required to take a cut in pay when any one of these divisions go out? That could mean staff might almost permanently work for the equivalent of strike pay, and one wonders if they would have the resources to survive and continue to serve the membership for whom they work.
I know there is money spent by many unions on things that don’t directly serve the membership. I wish it wasn’t so, but it is a fact of life in the corporate world as well. Why do we criticize business lunches paid for by unions, but we don’t seem to criticize business lunches paid for by corporations?
Safeway’s risks of losing market share are much greater when its stores, rather than both its stores and King Soopers are on strike. Safeway workers get some benefit from being holdouts. I’m somewhat mystified as to why Safeway workers would take such a different stance from King Soopers workers in advance of the vote, however. The other things this does in terms of local politics is end the justification Governor Ritter used to veto a key labor bill last year. The bill would have provided unemployment compensation to locked out employees, and he said he vetoed it because he didn’t want to change the rules in the midst of a grocery labor dispute where a lockout was likely. Now, a lockout is unlikely, so the justification for the veto of legislation (which most people thought he supported on the campaign trail) is gone. I just hope that this would be resolved without going to any loan lenders.