| FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE November 14, 2002 |
|
|
UFCW Files Unfair Labor Charges on Behalf of Dominick's Workers Safeway's systematic campaign to eliminate and reduce health care and retirement benefits and freeze wages for workers at 113 Chicagoland Dominick's stores now includes illegal actions on the part of the grocer. Locals 881 and 1546 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board against Dominick's Finer Foods based on complaints and statements reported to the Union by its members. The Unions and its members charge the company with threatening terminations and store closures, bad faith bargaining, by unlawfully negotiating directly with the workers instead of their Unions, and offering to buy votes in support of Safeway's "last and final" contract proposal. In addition, the unfair labor practice charges assert that workers were subjected to physical searches at closed door mandatory meetings with management. Finally since the contract expired, the Unions charge that Dominick's has unlawfully and unilaterally changed the employees' working conditions. "These charges are part of a pattern of serious violations of federal labor law by the management of Safeway and Dominick's," stated Jonathan Karmel, one of the unions' attorney's. "These tactics are not new to Safeway--they engaged in the same unlawful acts in California during a labor dispute last year. Safeway violated the law in its negotiations and by its campaign of fear and intimidation against its employees in order to unlawfully influence their vote." |
|
 |
 |
