June 20, 2009 12:05 AM UTC

King Soopers Employees Overwhelmingly Reject Contract

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• by: Colorado Pols

Updating a story we and diarists have followed occasionally, the results of the latest round of voting on a proposed new contract for unionized King Soopers grocery workers in Colorado are in.

They said “no” to management’s latest offer by the following margins:

Denver 92%

Colorado Springs 91%

Broomfield 100%

Pueblo 100%

Loveland 100%

Greeley (Meat) 100%

Fort Collins (Meat) 97%

Rather unambiguously “no” we’d say. This labor dispute is being followed closely for a number of reasons, including the ability of workers to hold a union together in a recession, by politicos mostly after Governor Bill Ritter waded into the dispute by vetoing this year’s House Bill 1170–which would have allowed locked-out employees, like grocery workers were during their last big dispute with management, to collect unemployment benefits. And the longer this dispute goes on, the more chances there will be for Ritter’s veto to be rehashed.

A lopsided result like this demonstrates that the workers are considerably more united than conventional wisdom gave them credit for. Our sense is that the union is more responsive today than it was in 1996, and better organized with email and online social networking tools to rapidly communicate. They’ve done a good job getting their side of the story out in the media, to the extent that more people in Denver are aware today that grocery stores are recession-proof and durably profitable than were back then. The union’s media campaign has focused on these profits, as well as hefty earnings posted by grocery management CEOs–while offering contracts featuring pay cuts and pension reductions for the workers. For example, did you know that the CEO of King Soopers’ income rose 45% between 2007 and 2008, and that Kroger’s (King Soopers’ parent) revenue grew to over $76 billion last year? We didn’t either, until we got an email about it.

In short? grocery store management is facing a tougher challenge than they have in the past extracting concessions from these workers, and a lot of it has to do with the same reasons you read, well, here on this blog. While we can’t predict what will ultimately happen as parties head back to the negotiating table, one thing’s for sure: this isn’t your Daddy’s labor dispute.