Strikes Loom in Arizona, Indiana
Dennis Stalzman has been around long enough to remember when UFCW members helped Safeway though rough financial times with wage freezes and cut backs in Sunday pay. Now that the company is one of the most profitable supermarkets in the country, he is a little puzzled and more than a little angry at the Safeway’s current contract offer. "What they have on the table is outrageous, it’s humiliating—a slap in the face," he says. Along with draconian cuts to health care benefits, the contract Safeway is proposing to approximately 15,000 Phoenix Local 99 members also includes no wage increases, cuts in Sunday and holiday pay, elimination of overtime after eight hours—as well as language that would virtually make it impossible for part-timers to ever qualify for health care coverage. "Everyone is concerned," he says. "These are strike issues." The Local 99 members could be on strike by October 25 when their contract with Safeway and Kroger expires.
In the Midwest, 7,000 Indianapolis, Ind., Local 700 members could be on strike by November 1, if Kroger remains insistent on wholesale cuts to health care and pension benefits. "Cuts to our health care benefits would spiral out of control if we accepted the Kroger proposal," says Mark Shearer a 32-year employee and UFCW member. "Every year Kroger makes record profits, and all they bring to the table is the blues."
Kroger worker Brandon Ivy, a two-year Local 700, member sizes up the Indiana situation bluntly: "It’s going to take a strike to get anything accomplished with this company. We all need to help each other out. We need to be like family."
 |
 |
