"Last, Best and Final Offer"

16 thoughts on ““Last, Best and Final Offer””

1. No wonder Walmart is planning to stay open 24×7.

   Oh wait, replacement workers will be servicing Safeway and King Soopers customers.

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   1. Not me.  I won’t cross the picket line.

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      1. What if your drug store is in City Market or Safeway and you pick up for yourself or someone else? Just asking.

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         1. But if we did, I might be tempted to ask the doc to write one I could take somewhere else.

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      2. to shop at non union WalMart or Whole Foods.

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         1. Forced by greedy, repressive grocery-store chains.

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   2. You got all those picket lines mapped out that you’ll get to cross?

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      1. The spouse does the shopping for the 6 of us.  She favors WFs.

         I’ll be tempted to make a few extra late night runs or stop by on the way home.

         What I really look forward to is the paid organizer-business manager from out of state hassling customers and yelling at some poor SOB trying to hold the line.

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2. a clerk at Safeway told me word was that management wanted to keep shining on negotiations to avoid strike/lockout now that we are in the holiday season, for fear of losing business at this lucrative time. Maybe it’s the opposite.  Maybe they think no one will bother with respecting picket lines during the holidays.

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3. thank the unions.
   
   If you have a pension, thank the unions. If you have health insurance, thank the unions. If the fire exits are not locked where you work, thank the unions.

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   1. .
      
      what have you done for me lately ?
      
      .

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   2. As a matter of fact I do not have Saturdays off (or even Sundays), or health insurance, or paid vacations, or even paid sick days.  I have to buy my own equipment as well.  The fire exits are not locked where I work, but otherwise…  

      I view unions as a highly mixed bag, but given my situation I doubt they can do anything for me as if I got anything more out of the company they’d just eliminate my position.

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4. It’s unclear why the UFCW workers weren’t given permission to strike last month by the International, but rumors that leadership in Washington DC has lost confidence in the local don’t appear to be a factor–they could have easily dragged the process out past the date that new local leadership is set to take over, but they didn’t.

   As far as i know, the International did not explain its reasons when it did not give strike sanction. However, some very significant events over the weekend give a very clear insight into just how far the International will go to enforce its will. I won’t reveal what has happened, at least not at this time. Things are quite sensitive right now, it is a critical moment with the wages and pensions of 17,000 working folk at stake. I will just say that the Local was, in my opinion, doing exactly what it needed to do to support the membership and win a good contract, and in response to those normal activities going forward at this time, the International has demonstrated quite forcefully that it has an agenda of its own.

   The coming week may reveal much of what has happened behind the scenes.

   In the meantime, the curious may benefit from a review of the history. The International stepped in five years ago and suspended an active vote on a contract offer. The International negotiated behind closed doors, and the Local and the International were at odds over whether the membership should accept the result of those secret negotiations. The members chose to trust the International at that time, accepting the offer in a mail-in ballot vote.

   That contract, recommended by the International, instituted a new two tier system that has resulted in fast food level wages for many workers; benefits that take up to three years to kick in for some workers; and, a multiplicity of rules by which anyone changing jobs or stores may be caught by surprise in the legalese, and dropped back to the lowest rate of pay.

   Here’s a curious fact: a significant minority of workers at the grocery chains will actually have more take home pay if they are on strike or locked out and collecting strike pay from the union, than they get in their paychecks in the stores. (Strike pay is $200 for a week of picket duty.)

   The grocery chains are also not putting enough money into the pension fund to cover the lower tier of workers, who now make up more than half of the membership. This very low accrual rate, together with the difficult economy, has put significant direct pressure on the pension fund. But there is also a not so subtle indirect risk which the companies may ultimately benefit from.

   Consider, corporations don’t just come up with contract proposals out of the blue. They rely upon experts who analyze not only the financial impact, but also the social impact of issues such as two tier wage systems. The second tier is an underclass, and as its membership increases, it gains voting power at contract time. The introduction of the second tier may eventually result in the second tier throwing out benefits that the first tier negotiated long before. Would you vote to strike to protect a pension for the older first tier workers, if your own pension accrual rate was so low that you might never have enough to retire?

   Two tier pay systems have been around for more than a century and a half, and they are inherently evil. (Anyone in the second tier is a second class citizen for life, so long as they stay at the same job. There is no path from the second tier into the first, no matter how many decades one works in the stores.)

   If there is a question of confidence on the part of the grocery workers, i think (from having talked to a thousand or more members) the role of the International looms large.

   As bad as the current contract is for many of the workers, the proposed contract (called the “final” offer by the companies) is worse. Among other things, it would eliminate pension related benefits outright, effectively freeze wages for most workers, and create a third tier.

   …regardless of how the union rank-and-file may feel about the local, they have consistently rejected contract proposals they find inadequate: we’ll see if the new contract offer makes enough concessions to change that.

   There is some confusion here. The contract needs to include FEWER concessions in order to have some chance of being acceptable to the membership.

   Disclosure: i work for the grocery workers. My job is talking with them individually or in small groups, and keeping them informed of developments during contract talks. I am not a spokesperson for the union. Any opinions that i express here are mine, and mine alone.

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