UPDATE: After very difficult negotiations involving both employers, UFCW Local 400 members successful ratified 19-month agreements at both Giant/Ahold and Safeway Inc. Please read our release, Giant, Safeway Workers Overwhelmingly Ratify New Contract, for an update.
With its current contract expiring on March 31, 2012, UFCW Local 400′s Bargaining Advisory Committee is hard at work and the union’s negotiators, led by Local President Thomas P. McNutt, are meeting weekly in joint negotiations with representatives from Safeway and Giant/Ahold.
While details of the negotiations are not being made public, it is expected the grocery chains will try to take advantage of the economy and high unemployment to force wage and benefit concessions. The union has announced it will resist any such demands, noting both companies have recovered from the recession and are posting record revenues and profits. Take a look at the companies profits on the financial results page of our blog.
If a new collective bargaining agreement is not reached by March 31st, the union is expected to ask its members to authorize a strike.
UFCW Local 400 represents some 17,000 grocery workers employed at 126 Safeway and Giant stores in Maryland, Northern Virginia and the District of Columbia. With a total membership over 40,000, it is the largest local union in the 1.2 million member United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.
Safeway and Netherlands-based Giant/Ahold are publicly-held companies that together control almost 60% of the Washington, DC metropolitan grocery market. For the past thirty years, their unionized workforces have given wage and benefit concessions to keep the firms profitable and there have been no strikes.
Local 400 President McNutt has been publicly warning shoppers of the potential for a strike and has declared 2012 “payback time.” See his closing remarks from a seminar for Giant and Safeway shop stewards: Download the full speech here.
Way to go President McNutt ! We have, without a doubt, raised the bar for all of our competitors in the DMV area ! All employess,from the past and present has devoted alot of time, sweat, and tears into Safeway and Giant. And to the CEO`s of both companies; RESPECT US, COMPENSATE US, AND PLEASE STOP INSULTING US WITH YOUR RIDICULOUS CONTRACT PROPOSALS !!!
Sincerely, Natalie C. Bolling (Safeway #1276)
Natalie, Thanks for all you do to stay engaged. We appreciate everything that you are doing!
I’m not quite sure exactly what’s going on at MY store, but something is off. Hours are continuously scarce and I was actually transferred to another department so the new manager could bring in “his own people”. I could go on but I won’t.
Something is rotten in the state of Denmark
We agree with you totally. The hours situation is happening everywhere and the numbers show that companies can afford to provide the hours–we hope this negotiation will at the very least, call attention to it. Thanks for commenting!
for weeks now at safeway 2753 there has been a massive hiring spree!!!!!! hours have been cut for part timers yet we turn around and r working more hrs cause there is not enough staff schedule!!!!! i was wondering…..can safeway fire union members who r in their first 90 days if that strike??? i feel as if this is why we have been having these major hires!!!!
why no TV/radio/newspaper coverage?
Jim, we’ve posted the coverage that we’ve gotten so far on the blog and we’ve been doing a lot of media outreach. It’s hard to get media coverage, as you can imagine, but if you know a journalist that might be interested, please pass that information onto us.
I shop at Giant in Fredericksburg at Hilltop daily along with my mother that has always been a Giant shopper and WE WILL NOT SHOP GIANT IF YOU DO NOT GIVE YOUR EMPLOYEES WHAT THEY DESERVE AND HAVE WORK FOR! Its sad the rich want to get richer and why are you rich? Come on your employees made you rich!!! Can’t you share some of the wealth??? I have a good friend that busts her butt for you!! FOR YEARS!!! Its really pathetic!!! Give back to the ones that make you rich!!!
This is great Denise! Please make sure to pass that on to the store manager of that store as well!