UFCW Workers Win Fight to Protect Health Care, Vote for New Agreement

UFCW members in Southern California voted 86 percent to ratify a new agreement affecting 70,000 grocery workers at almost 900 stores, with three supermarket companies, Safeway, Kroger and Albertsons, on February 26, 2004.

After 20 weeks without paychecks, workers won their fight to protect affordable health care, their pensions and job security. The companies demanded separate health and pension plans for current and future employees which would have resulted in the effective elimination of health care and retirement security benefits for workers.

Workers stuck together and won:

• Affordable health care benefits for new and current workers with no weekly employee premiums in the first two years, and only nominal payments if needed, in the third year.
• Employer contributions of nearly $190 million to re-build the health plan reserves.
• A combined pension fund for new hires and current employees – ensuring a secure pension fund in the future.
• A wage payment averaging about $500 in the first and third years of the contract.

In standing up for affordable health care, the grocery workers put health care on the national agenda and sent a message to employers everywhere that attempts to eliminate health care benefits will come at a high price. The strike also raised the alarm for national health care reform.

The support and solidarity of millions of people and organizations across America was essential to the workers.  From the first day on, customers refused to cross the lines with an average of 75% of customers shopping elsewhere, amounting to estimated loses of more than $2 billion for the companies.  Workers spirits were also lifted by community support including rallies and hundreds of thousands of dollars in food and financial aid.  Many national and local political, faith and labor leaders put their bodies on the line to defend the grocery workers and America's middle class.  Just days before the settlement, presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry joined the workers holding the line stating, "I honor these hard working men and women for taking a stand, on behalf of workers everywhere, in the fight for national health care reform... No worker should ever have to stand on a picket line in order to provide quality health care for their family."

Now the focus shifts, as UFCW contracts expire in Arizona, the Washington DC-Baltimore area, Northern California, Seattle and elsewhere.

See the Southern California local union websites for details on when workers will begin to start serving their customers.

Support:

¤ Celebrity Honor Roll
¤ Honor Roll of California's Elected Officials
¤ New Wave of Support for the Southern California Grocery Store   Workers, 2/20
¤ Nationwide Solidarity Update, 2/17 
¤ Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, 1/21
¤ "We Will Win for all California Families:" Vow Supermarket Strikers, 1/19
¤ 'Our Story: Why We're Holding the Line'--Video