Union workers at Safeway stores in Estes Park, Fountain and two stores in Pueblo walked off the job Sunday morning after a temporary contract extension ended with no agreement. Employees at the Safeway distribution center in Denver also joined the strike.
Understaffed stores, changes to health benefits and low wage increases are top issues for the union, as has been the case since the first contracts began expiring in January. The union also accuses managers from Albertsons-owned Safeway and its rivals at Kroger-owned King Soopers of unfairly teaming up to negotiate.
That’s threatening to take benefits away from its Safeway members, said Kim Cordova, president of United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 7, which represents workers at both grocery chains.
“This is our big problem. Even though they’re competitors and they’re separate, we do not agree to what’s called multi-employer bargaining,” Cordova said, while on site at one of the Pueblo stores to support picketing workers. “They’re trying to force that and in our opinion, this is collusion.”
Safeway officials haven’t responded to a request for comment since workers walked out Sunday. On Friday, the company said in a statement that it was “committed to productive discussions” and stores in Colorado remain open.
There were 105 Safeway and Albertsons stores in Colorado at the end of last year. At the time, King Soopers’ parent Kroger was in the process of merging with Albertsons. But in December, after a federal judge halted the $24.6 billion merger, Albertsons called off the merger. If the deal had gone through, Kroger would have sold most of the Safeway stores in Colorado to a wholesale grocery chain in New Hampshire.
In a letter to Safeway union members on Sunday, Cordova said that Safeway management refused to fully fund health care benefits, “failed to address the critical understaffing issue in Safeway/Albertsons stores,” and offered wage increases that are “far below competitors” in Colorado and Wyoming.
More Colorado Safeway stores could join the strike within days and even hours, Cordova said. Union members in Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Brighton, Evergreen, Idaho Springs, Estes Park, Fountain, Conifer Meat, Castle Rock, Grand Junction, Vail, Steamboat (meat department), Salida, Pueblo and Parker voted earlier this month to authorize a strike.
Union members in Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Greeley, Longmont and Loveland are expected to vote in the coming days on whether to join the strike. The union said there are about 7,000 Safeway workers in Colorado represented by the union.
“These are the first wave of the strikes,” Cordova said. “We have 68 different units here across the state. Safeway has a lot of market share in rural areas, and resort stores in mountain towns.”
The slow roll out of strikes “will allow time [for] the public to understand the problems these workers are facing, allow Safeway/Albertsons time to understand the seriousness of the workers’ resolve, and at the same time reduce the hardship on shoppers and workers alike that result from a wide-spread strike on shoppers and workers alike,” according to a union news release.
That’s a different approach from the King Soopers strike in February. Employees at 77 Denver metro area stores walked off the job for nearly two weeks. The strike ended after the two sides agreed to a “100 day period of labor peace,” which ended on June 8, according to an update from King Soopers. Company officials said the peace ended with “little meaningful progress” on a contract.
King Soopers employees at those stores could also return to the picket lines, Cordova said. The union is looking into whether the prior King Soopers strike authorization is allowed.
This is a developing story and may be updated.
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