Colorado:

Grocery stores offer new pact for workers; union votes next week
WAYNE HEILMAN
2009-11-14 14:55:12
The Gazette

Unionized grocery workers across Colorado expect vote next week on a “last, best and final” contract offered King Soopers and Safeway.

The union said the grocery firms will submit the proposal on Monday, the latest development in seven months of talks.

Members of United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 7 have threatened to strike during the tense contract negotiations. The final bid for a deal by Safeway and King Soopers was sought by the union as a way to avert a walkout.

“The workers’ major concern is to get the pension they were promised and to be paid a livable wage,” Local 7 spokesman Laura Chapin said Saturday. “Having made major concessions in the last contract, workers want to make sure they get a fair deal this time.”

Details of the offer were not available Saturday.

A message from King Soopers President Russ Dispense posted on a Web site for the company’s employees that his firm plans to submit the offer Monday and then would release details about it. He said King Soopers hopes “to bring these negotiations to a close soon, with the outcome an agreement that is good for our associates, good for our customers and good for the company.”

A Safeway spokeswoman wasn’t available Saturday for comment.

The latest offer comes after the union’s international president, Joseph Hansen, asked both companies for “last, best and final” offers to avert a strike against Safeway.

Local 7 members in September and October rejected “final” offers from King Soopers and Safeway and authorized a strike against Safeway. They couldn’t start a walkout, though, without permission from the international union.
Local 7 sought that authorization on Oct. 20.

Local 7 President Ernest Duran said in a Nov. 6 letter to Hansen that “we simply cannot let Thanksgiving and Christmas pass us by” as one of the best times to use the threat of a strike to trigger a better contract offer from both chains.

Any strike would be the first since the union staged a 42-day walkout against King Soopers in 1996, which triggered a lockout of union members by Safeway.

Both chains have agreed to lock out workers if the union goes on strike against the either. The grocers have advertised for temporary replacement workers who would be hired if the union calls a strike.

Local 7 represents 17,000 workers in Colorado and Wyoming at Albertsons, King Soopers and Safeway, including 1,700 workers in the Colorado Springs area.