DENVER—After securing a lucrative contract for grocery workers three years ago, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 is back at the bargaining table with King Soopers, an affiliate of grocery giant Safeway/Albertsons, and negotiations are stalling, again.

Last week, UFCW Local 7 units at King Soopers stores in Colorado Springs, Pueblo, Grand Junction and Northern Colorado agreed to a two week contract extension to continue bargaining. The King Soopers/City Market contract negotiations will resume January 15 and 16.

The extended contract will now expire on January 24 at midnight. Strike authorization votes could be held in the coming weeks.

“We’ve been negotiating with King Soopers City Market representatives for about three months, and we’ve made little to no progress with the company,” said Kim Cordova, president of the UFCW Local 7.

“The company has so much cash they have announced a plan to spend roughly $2 billion on stock buybacks. Instead of spending this money on its stock, the company should be investing in stores and workers,” the union said.

Late last year, in a blow to corporate interests and monopoly power, U.S. District Judge Adrienne Nelson in Portland, Ore., and King County Superior Court Judge Marshall Ferguson in Seattle, Wash., killed the Kroger-Albertson’s grocery chain mega-merger.

The resistance to the merger was spearheaded by the Stop the Merger campaign, a coalition of progressive UFCW locals, with little to no assistance from the International. Local 7 was part of the core of this coalition, along with Local 3000, Local 770 and Local 324. The other locals who were part of the coalition also will begin bargaining in late January and early February.

Even with excitement among UFCW members with the blocked merger, grocery workers are tired and have been overworked, Cordova said. “They have been really disregarded through this whole attempted merger that failed.” Immediately after the dissolution of the merger agreement, both Kroger and Albertsons announced billions of dollars of stock buybacks.

“It was a cynical move to line the pockets of CEOs and key shareholders rather than invest the money locally in sadder stores with fresher food,” Todd Crosby, who helped coordinate the Stop The Merger campaign, told People’s World. “This is money that could be invested in the workers who provided the service and safe food.”

Major issues continue to be low-staffing, unsafe working conditions in the stores, hours and wages for lower-tiered workers, a lack of a reasonable path to full-time employment, job protection from the use of artificial intelligence, and unreasonable quotas and shafting on overtime.

Says more help needed

“I would like to see more help in my department because I can’t continue to do the job of three clerks. We need help, we need workers!” a produce manager at the Denver King Soopers store said.

Roman V., who has worked at King Soopers for over eight years, said winning adequate staffing was the most important demand for him in this contract.

“It is so crazily understaffed there are hardly enough people there to do the job daily and people get in trouble constantly because of job performance. I don’t see how they can get in trouble for job performance when performing the job of several people,” he said.

“I transferred into the store two years ago, and we’ve been shorthanded the whole time that I’ve been here,” said grocery worker Irene. “We’re not meeting the standards because we don’t have enough people to do the required work. Since we’re not meeting the standards, they are taking away hours. This doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Throughout bargaining, Safeway/Albertsons has refused to provide the union with basic information and data concerning staffing models—the main grievance workers and their union have with the company.  And, as Local 7 points out, Safeway/Albertsons is doing well, but they are still cutting hours.

“Despite the company’s claims over the past two years that they need to merge with Kroger to do well, their sales numbers actually surpassed Kroger’s. This occurred even though Safeway/Albertsons gave away $4 billion in cash to wealthy shareholders back in early 2023. Adding insult to injury, the companies would be doing far better if they adequately staffed our stores,” the union said.

Chris Herrera, a 40-year UFCW member and bargaining committee member, said that so far in negotiations, Safeway/Albertsons has been unwilling to make the necessary improvements to staffing levels, angering the workers and prompting many to want to authorize a strike.

The strike three years ago was one of the largest strikes in Colorado history, with 8,000 workers walking out, and it marked the first time grocery workers have gone on strike in the state since the late 1990s.

Last time around, King Soopers hired scabs to work at higher wages during the strike. In response, the union filed Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charges against the company. When the strike concluded, King Soopers had to fire all the scabs and was forced to promote more than 500 part-time workers to full-time by the end of that year.

It’s unclear whether or not King Soopers will try the same union-busting tactic this time and workers aren’t holding their breath that the company will bargain in good faith without breaking labor law. Like in 2022, Local 7 has filed a number of charges with the National Labor Relations Board concerning ULPs.

“The company seems set on continuing its pattern of illegal and unfair labor practices, including a continuing refusal and failure to provide information, a cover-up of a 2022 agreement with Kroger that undercut negotiating leverage, and implementing new policies without notifying or bargaining with the Union,” Local 7 said in a bargaining update last week.

“We remain focused on addressing staffing as a way to improve take-home pay and improve stores as places to work and shop. The company’s cutting of staff in Colorado is backfiring.”

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