Grocery union seeking permission to strike this weekend

Unionized grocery workers in Colorado could launch the first strike in 13 years by this weekend after contract talks broke down and negotiators voted to seek permission from the United Food and Commercial Workers union for a walkout.

Members of UFCW Local 7 voted overwhelmingly in late September and early October to reject final offers from both King Soopers and Safeway, authorize a strike against Safeway and ask both chains to return to the bargaining table for further negotiations.

Local 7’s bargaining committee made a new contract offer during talks Tuesday with both chains.

Safeway said the union’s offer was little changed its  last proposal in early September. “In response, (Safeway) expressed an unwillingness to change its position further based on the union’s lack of meaningful movement,” Kris Staaf, a Safeway spokeswoman in Denver, said in a press released Wednesday.
No further talks have been scheduled.

The union’s committee asked both chains for “last, best and final” contract offers, which both refused, according to Local 7’s Web site. As a result, the committee sought “final strike sanction” from the UFCW’s international headquarters in Washington, D.C. While no timetable has been set for a decision on approving a  strike or when one would begin, Local 7’s Web site said approval could come in “a day or two.”

“We hope” there won’t be a strike, said Laura Chapin, a Local 7 spokeswoman in Wheat Ridge. “The international could finalize the paperwork and (Safeway) could come back with a new offer. That is what we are hoping for. We are hoping (Safeway) will finally make an offer different from the one they made in April. The strike votes were a message to (Safeway) that they are making plenty of money and they should give us a fair contract.”

Chapin also disagreed that Local 7 has been unwilling to change its position, saying the union had “substantially pared down” its demands and made “as many as 10 serious moves” in its earlier offers to reach a new agreement with the chains.

Diane Mulligan, a King Soopers spokeswoman, said the company is “concerned about this situation and still believes that absolutely no one wins in a strike.”

Any strike would be the first since the union staged a 42-day walkout against King Soopers in 1996, triggering a lockout of union members by Safeway.

Both chains have agreed to lock out workers if the union goes on strike against the other, and have been advertising for temporary replacement workers who would be hired only if the union launches a strike.
Negotiations on a new contract began in April; the union represents more than 17,000 workers at Albertsons, King Soopers and Safeway who have been working without a contract since a previous agreement expired in May with Albertsons and in September with King Soopers and Safeway. In the Colorado Springs area, Local 7 represents 780 workers at 13 Safeway stores, about 1,000 at 10 King Soopers stores and an undisclosed number at an Albertsons store at 455 E. Cheyenne Mountain Blvd.

The latest offer from both chains included raises totaling $1.35 an hour for the highest-paid workers over the five-year deal. The offer also included nearly $40 million in additional contributions to an underfunded pension plan, reduced waiting periods to get medical benefits for family members and new preventative health care benefits.

Union officials said the offers were little changed from the chains’ initial offers in April and would require cuts in future pension accruals by up to 62 percent, raise the minimum retirement age for Local 7 members from 50 to 55 and end a $200-a-month supplement payment for retirees age 60 to 62. The union’s September proposal included wage increases for all workers of up $1.40 an hour over the next three years and a graduated pension contribution plan that avoided benefit cuts.

The union also said an arbitrator has scheduled hearings for Dec. 16-18 to hear arguments from the union and representatives for the three chains on whether to cut benefits and future accruals from the underfunded pension plan.
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