Safeway employees are asking people to take their business to other grocery stores while they try to negotiate a better contract with the grocery chain’s corporate owners. They welcome others to join them on the picket line to support their efforts to get better wages and fairer benefits.
Workers say Safeway/Albertsons has been driving formerly middle class jobs down into minimum wage jobs. Full time workers are now having a hard time feeding their own families due to the low wages. Safeway slashed employees’ hours, ignored their proposals on staffing and other important issues, spent over $8.9 billion worth of their company’s profits on dividends for investors and stock buybacks instead of putting that money into their stores and their employees to improve service and store operations. On top of all that, Safeway is also working to slash workers’ health care and pension funding, too, and Safeway management walked away from a signed agreement to provide retroactive pay and benefit increases. Workers say they’re fed up with Safeway’s greed and the stores’ owners are bargaining in bad faith.
Grand Junction is already considered a low-wage area compared to other parts of Colorado.
The average hourly wage in Grand Junction is about 10.5% lower than the national average and some sources indicate that wages in Grand Junction can be 20-40% lower than in other areas of the state, at a time when a decent home for a family can cost half a million dollars. Safeway is making it harder for their employees to survive. Given this, workers felt they had no other choice than to strike.
Frustrated with a lack of progress in contract negotiations, members of United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) across Colorado authorized an Unfair Labor Practice Strike on June 15, saying they “resoundingly told Safeway/Albertsons that they were fed up with the Company’s unfair labor practices.”
An overwhelming 98% of Union members voted to authorize the strike.
Workers also want to warn Safeway customers that chronic understaffing at their stores has had a daily impact on customers by causing long lines, empty shelves and deceptive product pricing. The same problems that are causing deceptive pricing at Kroger stores are also affecting Safeway stores, and research by consumer advocate groups has shown customers are chronically being charged higher prices at checkout than they see displayed on the shelves.
A few details might be helpful.
“The average Safeway in colorado is $47,647 per year or $24.11 per hour. Entry-level positions start at $40,950 per year, while most experienced workers make up to $71,450 per year.”
I don’t know how accurate these numbers are
It would also be helpful to know what the employee demands are.
It boggles the mind to see all these stores with different names that are under the Kroger umbrella.
I really hate to shop now…ridiculous prices that will never go down and that horrible woman inside the checkout computer incessantly talking throughout the checkout process.
I used to study my receipt. Now I can’t wait to get the hell out of there.
From the article: “Safeway workers at the 29 Rd.& Patterson store are striking to get living wages, decent health insurance and pensions, and want Safeway to put more money into improving their stores and boosting honest pricing for customers.”