April 24, 2004
Grocery Stores Bracing For Potential Employee Strike
SEATTLE - The contract is quickly running out between several big name grocery stores and their employees. It affects workers at Safeway, Albertsons, Fred Meyer, and QFC stores.
New developments in the negotiations Friday have angered some workers.
If you looked through the newspaper Friday, you probably saw full page ads looking for replacement workers.
Several big grocery store chains are looking for replacement workers if union members at stores hit the picket line.
But many employees say these ads are just meant to scare workers.
Paul Henry, a worker at QFC, called the signs, "an intimidation tactic, that there is a sign there that says we are advertising for your job."
Henry is just a year and half from retiring. He says grocery stores want to make people like him a thing of the past.
"I get the feeling now that they want it to be disposable type jobs where a person would walk in, work a couple years and then walk out and they would hire a new person," Henry said.
The union's contract with Safeway, QFC, and Fred Meyer expires on May 2. The stores say the ads and signs are not to scare employees.
"It's a normal part of the process for the employers to prepare for a strike just like the union has been doing for the last several months," said Melinda Merrill with Allied Employers. "It is absolutely not an indication of where we think negotiations are going."
Both sides have been looking to California, where a bitter grocery strike went on for months.
While both sides say they are doing all they can to avoid that here, the stores say they can't afford to pay the kind of wages and benefits they are right now.
"The labor costs of the current contract are too high," Merrill said. "The cost of health and welfare benefits need to be brought under control."
Cuts in benefits at stores in California already brought out picket signs at a Seattle Safeway store in February. The union says you should be worried if big grocery stores are able to slash what they pay their workers.
"Once it goes that way for our workers in the grocery store, it could go that way for workers in other industries that buy groceries in our grocery stores," said Brenda Willis with UFCW 1105.
Henry adds: "It's an attempt to push us down into the working poor. I mean that is what the effect will be."
Even though the contract with the stores expires on May 2, both sides are still talking, and say they are willing to keep talking even after the contract runs out.