Grocery store officials sweeten deal with signing bonuses

King Soopers and Safeway have offered signing bonuses up to $1,000 in the form of gift cards to unionized workers in Colorado and Wyoming as part of what supermarket officials are calling “last, best and final” contract proposals.

The proposals also would include slightly bigger raises and shorter-term contracts.

The offer is “Safeway’s best effort to reach new contracts with Local 7 and we haven’t held anything back,” Kris Staaf, a Safeway spokeswoman in Denver, said Wednesday in a press release. “We believe we have provided our employees with a significantly improved offer that allow us to effectively compete, and helps protect our business, and the jobs of our employees that are threatened by the growing presence of non-union, low cost operators in Colorado.”

“King Soopers has offered bonuses, raises, increased healthcare benefits and nearly $40 million to help stabilize the pension fund in an economy where other companies are withholding raises, slashing healthcare benefits and freezing pension,” King Soopers President Russ Dispense said in the release.

Local 7’s 200-person negotiating committee was still reviewing the offer Wednesday and hadn’t made any decisions on the contract, Chapin said.

The 52-month contract is eight months shorter than previous proposals. The first-year raise of 30 cents an hour for the highest-paid employees is 5 cents an hour higher than earlier offers, said Diane Mulligan, a King Soopers spokeswoman. The proposal also includes bonuses paid in gift cards upon ratification ranging from $150 to $1,000 depending on position, status and length of service that were not included in previous offers, she said.

The raises would apply to nearly two-thirds of King Soopers unionized work force who earn “the top rate or above,” the company said Wednesday in a press release. Laura Chapin, a spokeswoman for United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 7, said the union’s records show that more than half of its members working for grocery stores were hired since 2005 under a now-expired contract that pays workers hired since 2005 less than those hired before then.

Other parts of the deal include subsequent 25 cent-an-hour annual raises, $40 million in additional payments to an underfunded pension plan, reduced waiting periods to get medical benefits for family members and new preventative health care benefits.

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