Know where to shop for groceries in the event that UFCW members go on strike

As of this morn­ing, we are twelve hours away from a pos­si­ble strike against Fred Mey­er, Safe­way, Albert­son’s, and QFC by our broth­ers and sis­ters in the Unit­ed Food & Com­mer­cial Work­ers, Local 21. The hard­work­ing mem­bers of Local 21 are try­ing to nego­ti­ate a new con­tract with the big chains, but so far, they have been unable to reach an agree­ment. UFCW Local 21’s mem­bers have autho­rized a strike in the event an agree­ment is not reached by 7 PM tonight.

In prepa­ra­tion for the strike, the chains have begun putting out signs announc­ing that they may soon be hir­ing tem­po­rary work­ers (or scabs, in union parlance).

If there is a strike, we ask that all of our read­ers hon­or it by not shop­ping at any Fred Mey­er, Safe­way, QFC, or Albert­son’s store until the work­ers agree on a con­tract with the man­age­ment of these com­pa­nies, which are rep­re­sent­ed by Allied Employ­ers. Stand in sol­i­dar­i­ty with UFCW work­ers — don’t cross a pick­et line.

And even if there isn’t a pick­et line, don’t go into a store where work­ers have walked off the job because they were unable to obtain a fair contract.

Here are the stick­ing points in the nego­ti­a­tions, accord­ing to UFCW:

• No health­care cov­er­age for every­one work­ing less than 30 hours a week (and that means they will cut hours so no one works more than 30 hours/week).
• No time-and-a-half on holidays
• No cost of liv­ing wage increase and mas­sive cuts in many parts of their contracts.

Nego­ti­a­tions have been ongo­ing for months, but have not result­ed in an agree­ment. Time is run­ning out and it looks like a walk­out could be imminent.

UFCW has post­ed a map and a list of all of the local, union­ized gro­cers in West­ern Wash­ing­ton where you can take your busi­ness dur­ing a strike. If you’re into eat­ing healthy and eat­ing organ­ic, you’ll be glad to know PCC Nat­ur­al Mar­kets is on the list of stores that are safe to patron­ize. You can also shop at Met­ro­pol­i­tan Mar­ket, Haggen, Top Food & Drug, or Uwa­ji­maya stores.

UFCW also has a list of phar­ma­cies in King Coun­ty that will be unaf­fect­ed by the strike. Hope­ful­ly they’ll update that list to make it more comprehensive.

By boy­cotting the afore­men­tioned big chains in the event of a labor dis­pute, you’re sup­port­ing their work­ers’ efforts to win a fair contract.

The Stand has more infor­ma­tion about the nego­ti­a­tions between UFCW and Allied Employ­ers (Fred Mey­er, QFC, Safe­way, and Albertson’s).