Union Bureaucracy Ends Three-Week Colorado Safeway Strike

Read our editorial on the significance of strikes here.

On July 5, Colorado Safeway workers’ three-week strike ended after the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) reached a tentative agreement with Albertsons, the parent company of Safeway. The strike had expanded to over half of all Safeway grocery stores in the state prior to it ending. The agreement comes as grocery strikes across the country are averted one after another with tentative agreements reached between UFCW and grocery monopolies Kroger and Albertsons.

Colorado workers will soon be voting to ratify the proposed contract, which the union “fully recommends” and describes as “all gains, no concessions.” The union posted a general outline of the contract on its social media, while details will not be available until the ratification vote meetings.

Many workers express doubt in the UFCW’s ability to win their demands, with some citing the union’s recent sellout contract that averted a grocery store workers strike in Washington. The sellout contract covering Washington workers, which the union called a “breakthrough contract,” included a $2.70 increase in annual hourly wage over the next two years, a mere $0.30 increase from what was initially proposed by the grocery monopolies. Considering the increased health insurance costs and inflation, this amounts to a decrease in real wages. According to workers on social media, increased staffing—one of the workers’ primary demands—was addressed only abstractly in the contracts. The contract also removed the union’s initial proposal that ICE agents must have a warrant signed by a federal judge to be let inside stores.

Much like the UFCW local in Colorado, the local in Washington did not present the details of the contract to workers until voting began. As a worker described on social media, this method is in stark contrast to the union’s prompt presentation of contract details when they recommend workers to reject a contract.

UFCW locals representing 45,000 Kroger and Albertsons workers in Southern California also reached a tentative agreement with the companies on July 3, averting a strike after workers voted overwhelmingly to authorize strikes in early June. Details of the contract have yet to be released publicly. Some workers who have seen the contract stated on social media that the contract will not improve the working or living conditions of workers.

On the same day, the UFCW local representing King Soopers workers in Colorado reached a tentative agreement with its parent company Kroger, averting a strike authorization vote. A worker indicated on social media that the union scheduled negotiations right before the Fourth of July, preventing workers’ ability to strike during the profitable holiday even if a tentative agreement had not been reached, as the union is required to give a 72-hour strike notice to the company. As with the Safeway workers, the only statement in the King Soopers contract that addresses staffing issues was “a new test-and-learn trial to study real and meaningful staffing improvements.”

Negotiations continue at a few other locations around the country, including in Indianapolis and Northern California, where grocery store workers have voted or are scheduled to hold strike authorization votes in the coming weeks. The UFCW bureaucracy has so far withheld a nation-wide strike, saving the grocery monopolies from the strike’s potential blow while they scramble to address falling net incomes, with Kroger announcing two weeks ago that it will be closing down 60 grocery stores over the next 18 months.

Image: SafeWay workers on strike. Credit: UFCW Local 7.

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