The 23,000 member United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Union Local 7 called off their strike against Safeway and Albertsons today after negotiations yielded decisive gains for grocery store workers across Colorado. A few of the promised new benefits are listed above. The new agreement is said to be over 170 pages long.
Once again, a strike proved an effective tool in forcing employers to listen to, and meet employees’ demands. While not always 100% successful, strikes have historically been successful in achieving significant gains for workers, including higher pay, improvements in job safety, better benefits and work schedules. Strikes, or even the threat of a strike, can confer leverage on employees in negotiations with employers.
Frederick Douglass once said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Workers who fight for themselves alone rarely succeed individually. In contrast, labor unions have helped American workers win a large number of crucial benefits many people take for granted today, including the 8-hour work day and 40-hour work week, 2-day weekends, mandated overtime wages, paid vacations and paid sick time, pensions or 401Ks, child labor laws, the establishment of a minimum wage and much more.
On average, unionized workers:
- Earn better wages and benefits than nonunion workers. On average, union workers as whole earn over $190 more per week compared to their nonunion counterparts;
- Are more likely to have jobs that provide health insurance, paid vacation, holidays and sick leave, scheduling overtime protection and other benefits;
- Have more rights that protect them on the job than nonunion workers.
If you are a worker in Mesa County and want the advantages of being in a union, whether you’re a retail worker, nurse, teacher, oil and gas worker, industrial or manufacturing worker, painter, construction worker, roofer or any other occupation, there’s a union for you. You just have to find it. A good place to start looking is at UnionFacts.com.
It seems that the retirement funds should be taken out of the employer’s hands. Move it to an independent financial company. This prevents they employers from siphoning funds from the retirement accounts.
Further, the retirement funds are no longer depenendent on the continued solvency of the employer/
-Mike