06:03 PM PDT on Thursday, June 17, 2004
By LINDA BRILL / KING 5 News
SEATTLE - Safeway, QFC, Fred Meyer and Albertsons are the big grocery chains involved in a bitter contract dispute. On Thursday, their employees started hitting the streets and knocking on doors, looking for public support.
Debbi Knight has worked for QFC for 30 years. Knight joined dozens of grocery workers who say the grocery chains are unfairly cutting their health benefits and workers will have to make up the difference.
"I figure it's gonna lower my wage by $5 an hour and I cannot make my car payment, my house payment," she said.
Grocery clerk salaries top out at about $30,000 a year. Workers say benefit cuts will make them among the working poor.
"With the proposals they have now it would drive us into a lower income ... totally unacceptable," said QFC worker Robin Olson.
If the 16,000 local workers strike, they will ask customers to boycott the big grocery chains.
"I think they're hard workers and if they have an issue, I'd support them if it was valid," said one shopper.
"I'm personally pro union so I would choose not to cross a picket line," said another.
Safeway and the other chains say the health care reduction is not unreasonable.
"Employee contributions to health care are not radical, not new, they're not unaffordable," said grocery store spokeswoman Melinda Merrill.
As Knight and her co-workers look for public support, Safeway is looking for new employees.
"If these corporate giants get to do what they do and put across that proposal, the members that I represent will be using food stamps in their own grocery stores," said union president Sharon McCann.
This is not a corporate boycott campaign, at least not yet. The grocery workers want the public to know they're unhappy and they might be calling for a boycott.
There are more of these rallies scheduled around Puget Sound next week. And more negotiations are set for the end of this month and early July.
The United Food and Commercial Workers Union represents nearly 17,000 grocery workers. Their contract, extended from May, expires June 25.
Posted by UFCW 227 at June 17, 2004 09:54 PM