Contract Deadline in 10 Days
By Michael Barbaro
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, March 20, 2004; Page E01
Giant Food LLC and Safeway Inc., which are renegotiating a contract with 18,000 local grocery workers, will begin recruiting temporary employees to operate their 350 Washington area stores in case there is a strike, the companies said yesterday.
The chains will run advertisements seeking cashiers, clerks and customer service workers beginning in tomorrow's editions of The Washington Post and Baltimore Sun, according to company spokesmen.
The union and the chains have extended the deadline for negotiating a contract from March 27 to March 30, the day workers are scheduled to vote on a final proposal from Giant and Safeway, which are jointly negotiating the contract.
The decision to seek temporary workers is the latest sign of how intensely both sides are preparing for the possibility of a strike, which could disrupt business at the region's two biggest supermarket chains, which together control 48 percent of the Washington area grocery market.
The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 has already selected strike captains, distributed instructions for setting up picket lines and handed out the names of bail bondsmen in case striking workers are arrested.
"It's simply prudent preparation," Harry Burton, the lead negotiator for Giant and Safeway, said of the recruitment. "It is important to serve our customers."
In a statement, Local 400 President C. James Lowthers said the advertisements are used not only to staff stores "but also as a scare tactic to incite fear and disunity among our members."
Safeway spokesman Greg TenEyck said people interested in jobs can pick up applications from the company's stores on Sunday, and the chain will start conducting interviews in stores on Monday. Giant will follow a similar schedule, company spokesman Barry F. Scher said.
If there is a strike, Safeway plans to pay temporary workers $10 an hour, which is $3.40 more than the starting wage for new cashiers. Giant's planned wage is unclear.
In a letter posted on Giant's employee Web site yesterday, the Landover-based company notified employees that it would begin advertising for temporary help but said the workers "are not your replacements."
"If there is a work stoppage, we want you back on the job as soon possible after it's over," the letter says.
Giant and Safeway have vowed to cut wage, pension and health care costs to compete with nonunion chains such as Food Lion and Harris Teeter, which operate at lower costs.
Safeway yesterday released a report on its employee Web site saying that grocery clerks at the company earn about $13.37 an hour, compared with a grocery clerk at a local nonunion store, who makes about $7.61 an hour. The company said it pays between $8,000 and $11,000 a year to provide health care to a union worker, three times more than its local competition.