Tagged as Grocery Workers United

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Collective Bargaining, Economic Justice, Kroger, Press Releases, Retail Food, UFCW Industries

KROGER WORKERS IN HOUSTON SHOW STRENGTH AND SOLIDARITY THOUGH STRIKE VOTE

May 25, 2007

Washington, DC—Grocery workers represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) are fighting back against the Kroger Company’s nineteenth century bargaining tactics. Kroger seems to be operating under that century’s model of “robber baron bargaining”—pushing workers to the brink and forcing strikes, all to justify greedy demands at the bargaining table and in the community.

In Houston, where 12,700 workers are involved in negotiations with Kroger, UFCW members turned out in droves to vote by over 97% to authorize a strike against the supermarket company.

“There’s no excuse for Kroger’s behavior,” said Pat O’Neill, UFCW Executive Vice President and Director of Collective Bargaining.  “By beating on their own workers, Kroger is hurting morale in the stores, and customers are changing their shopping habits in an attempt to avoid a crisis at their grocery store. Ultimately, it accomplishes little for either side at the table.”

It’s time to put an end to this kind of “crisis bargaining” where a profitable company like Kroger comes to the table making outrageous demands of its hourly workers–threatening to chronically underfund health care and risk huge benefit cuts for workers.

UFCW members understand that the rising cost of health care in the U.S. is a crisis we all must face together. In previous contracts, Houston members have worked diligently to lower health care costs. Workers are picking up their share. Their hard work has made Kroger the hugely profitable chain it is today.

But Kroger’s greed just keeps increasing.  The company seems intent on driving workers to the brink of a strike, and threatening to disrupt tens of thousands of consumers in an attempt to extract even more from its workforce.

Kroger can’t have it both ways.  CEO David Dillon crows to investors and the public that when Wal-Mart expands its operations, Kroger gains market share, increases sales and boosts profits. There’s no excuse, then, to claim that competition from the low-wage, no-benefit Wal-Mart should require workers to strike in order to save affordable health care.

In Southern California, Seattle, Oregon, Montana, Illinois, Detroit, Toledo, and St Louis, UFCW members working in the grocery industry are also in tough negotiations with mammoth employers like Kroger and Supervalu.  Members throughout the country are unified in a nationwide movement to improve jobs in the grocery industry for workers, families, and communities.

For more on UFCW negotiations across the country, please visit the Grocery Workers United website at www.groceryworkersunited.org.

UFCW Stewards

Building an Active Membership to Secure Better Contracts

Apr 08, 2007

Over the last year, the UFCW has undergone a restructuring process so that resources are focused to growing UFCW membership. The UFCW is more powerful with more UFCW members, and that’s the key to negotiating better contracts with employers.

Accordingly, in addition to securing better contracts, one goal of bargaining is growth. The first step to growth is unity bargaining, where UFCW members across the country who work in the same industry or for the same employers unite to bargain for better contracts. This makes sense because UFCW members no longer work for the small, locally owned employers of yesterday. Those small businesses have been taken over and are owned by a handful of national and multi-national employers with millions or billions of dollars in resources.

The recently launched Grocery Workers United is the first example of the UFCW’s unity bargaining campaign in the retail food industry. This campaign has a website, a major email activist program, and bulletin board flyers to keep UFCW grocery workers informed and mobilized. The campaign also creates national collective action through sticker and petition campaigns. For instance, UFCW members who work at Kroger grocery stores throughout the U.S. can show solidarity and support for members bargaining with Kroger stores in a particular area by wearing stickers or signing petitions.

Grocery Workers United has helped secure better contracts for several local unions who have already bargained contracts this year. The UFCW is building on the early success by further mobilizing UFCW members: identifying a “store coordinator” to inform and activate coworkers and customers, doubling the number of e-mail activists, and holding worksite meetings.

While the grocery industry has been the first to engage in unity bargaining, this type of unity campaign will extend to other industries like food processing, meatpacking, and poultry. The ultimate goal of unity bargaining in each industry is to create a core group of activists within our membership who will quickly respond with action in support of UFCW members nationwide. The key to mobilizing UFCW members and creating a core group of activists is through UFCW stewards. Stewards have day-to-day contact with members and can hold in-store or in-plant meetings, handle questions, and be the conduit for union and store information around the clock.

This year, the UFCW is initiating a program of multi-local stewards meetings. In areas where local unions have common employers, stewards can meet together to shape a common agenda and form a common program. Stewards will be trained to talk to their coworkers about union-wide bargaining, how to conduct break room meetings, and how to respond to questions.

This kind of industry-wide unity is a necessity for securing better contracts with our employers. The UFCW will continue to coordinate bargaining and contract expirations dates, as well as continue to use other resources such as political and legislative action and community pressure. But the UFCW’s strength at the bargaining table will come from the commitment of UFCW members uniting and acting together.

Our employers have to be convinced that the UFCW is capable of sustained union‑wide action if we are to convince them to change their behavior. Our employers complain about non-union competition, yet they become just that when they open up new plants or stores as non-union. If our employers want us to confront the non‑union competition, they must cooperate with us at the bargaining table and remain neutral in organizing new plants or stores. We are not going to help our employers grow if they want to expand non-union and have UFCW membership shrink. A union employer accepts and respects the union in every plant or store, in every area.

We can work with our employers to level the playing field with their non-union competition if they cooperate with us in creating a union differential in our contracts that attracts non‑union workers and helps us organize. That is how we can level the playing field. Everyone at every level of the UFCW must constantly, consistently and forcefully raise these issues in all of our dealings with our employers.

For UFCW members, the contract is the way to a better life. It’s what makes them “union” and they must be engaged in the plan for growth. UFCW members must become activists for growth because it’s the way to make contracts better, and that is the way to make life better for UFCW members.

Collective Bargaining, Press Releases, Retail Food, UFCW Industries

NATIONAL GROCERY WORKER MOVEMENT UNITES WORKERS AND STRENGTHENS BARGAINING POWE

Dec 27, 2006


(Washington, DC)— For the second month in a row, grocery workers across America are coming together in an unprecedented show of strength and solidarity.  With nearly half a million United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) grocery workers’ contracts up for negotiation over the next 18 months, grocery workers nationwide are supporting each other through in-store actions and other support-building activities. Workers also have a website, www.groceryworkersunited.org, which offers downloads of flyers, videos, photos and news about the grocery industry.

This is the first time that grocery workers have been united on such a scale. Their movement is growing fast, gaining momentum and generating buzz, as grocery workers nationwide gear up for bargaining in 2007.   As Javier Perez of UFCW Local 870, in Oakland, Calif., said, “National bargaining re-enforces the whole concept of what a union means. It means we all band together and struggle for what we think is right.”

Last month, supermarket workers represented by the UFCW launched the national store-to-store movement of grocery workers. Workers wore 850,000 stickers in stores over five days in November, to demonstrate unity and solidarity with other UFCW supermarket employees across the country.

Now community members are voicing their support for grocery workers’ goals: career jobs with affordable health care, and wages that pay the bills. UFCW members across the country have asked customers and the community to stand by them as upcoming contracts are negotiated. And workers have been overwhelmed by the positive response.

As Supa Tong of UFCW Local 400 in Bethesda, Md., noted, “Our customers are very supportive of the stickers. I think that they’ll support us, because we are also members of their community. If we have better wages and health care, it’s good for everyone.”

To celebrate solidarity between grocery workers and the community, UFCW members will wear a special sticker in their stores on December 27-31.   The sticker reads, “Grocery workers and community members for good jobs and affordable health care.”

“Everybody needs health care,” said Richard Waits, of Local 44 in Mt. Vernon, Wash. “Our customers support us because they are facing the same issues—paying for health care, supporting their families. Customers have told me that they’re glad we’re fighting for those things, because it helps the whole community.”