Thousands of grocery workers started walking the picket lines at King Soopers stores from Boulder to Parker early Wednesday morning, a day after the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 rejected the company’s latest contract offer.
With no movement on contract negotiations, which started in October, leading up to Saturday’s expiration of the current deal, the threat of a strike increased. Once the union spurned Tuesday’s proposal – which included wage increases and health care benefits as well as bonuses ranging from $2,000 to $4,000 for ratification of the contract – workers planned Wednesday morning’s walkout.
“Our original offer on the table was $148 million in wage increases. We raised that to $170 million … which is the largest wage increase in the history of King Soopers and City Market,” Joe Kelley, president of Kroger-owned King Soopers and City Market, said Tuesday.
There was no movement on contract negotiations Wednesday.
When the union called the strike, UFCW Local 7 president Kim Cordova said it would last three weeks.
About 15 people were on the picket line early Wednesday morning at a King Soopers store on South Colorado Boulevard in Denver. Several cars drove into the parking lot, slowed down and gave a thumbs up or honked when the drivers saw the picket signs and drove away.
Union members had flyers they would hand to customers entering the store that suggested alternative places to shop, such as Safeway and Sprouts.
Keri Noden, a 31-year King Soopers employee, said business was slow for a typical weekday.
“The parking lot is usually much more full,” Noden said as she stood outside with fellow union members.
Inside, there were a handful of shoppers and some workers were standing and talking to each other. As the morning went on, business did pick up.
Some people weren’t persuaded to support the strike and shop elsewhere. A man who wouldn’t give his name told employee Paul Hoffmaster that if King Soopers raises wages, the money will come out of customers’ pockets.
At a King Soopers store on East Mississippi Avenue in Aurora, Talisa Canche and Dashawn Garcia rolled out two shopping carts full of food and unloaded them into the back of their SUV. They said they support the striking workers, but the store is convenient for them and has better deals than other stores, although they complained they had to do some of their own bagging because there weren’t many workers in the store.
“I see where they’re coming from, but it’s not going to keep me from shopping,” Canche said.
“Working in retail, customer service gets hard, it gets frustrating,” Garcia said. “But at the end of the day, we’ve got families to feed. We have to go where they have better deals.”
However, Gary Enriquez, a regular customer at the Aurora store, said he’ll shop “everywhere else around here but here” during the strike. He and his daughters, Aracely, 4, and Ariel, 3, pulled a little wagon full of snacks along the picket line, handing out bags of potato chips, cookies and drinks to the striking workers.
Laura Riedel got a round of “Thank you” from workers on the picket line at a King Soopers on South Pierce Street in Littleton when she said she would buy her coffee and creamer elsewhere.
“I want to support them because this is my neighborhood grocery store,” said Riedel, who made the decision after talking to the employees.
Ardita Florez was among the workers walking the picket line at the South Pierce Street store in Littleton. She said she makes $18 an hour as a part-time employee and doesn’t get benefits. While Florez said she’s lucky because of her family’s financial situation, other part-time workers struggle to get by.
“I’m out here because I see my coworkers who are not able to eat,” Florez said.
A report titled “Hungry at the Table,” commissioned by four units of the UFCW and released Tuesday, said that 78% of the employees at Kroger-owned stores in Colorado and two other states who responded to a survey reported not having enough food to eat.
Kroger called the report paid for by the union misleading, contending it relies on flawed data. The company said an analysis it commissioned and released Wednesday shows 85,000 hourly employees of the company’s stores in California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington are more highly compensated than employees working for its peers.
Providing benefits to employees would be better than the one-time bonuses King Soopers has proposed, Florez said.
King Soopers has urged the union to let members vote on the company’s latest contract offer.
“We have a member-led bargaining committee of over 70 King Soopers employees who decide what we vote on and they decided the offer on the table isn’t any good,” Joshua Haymore, who works at the store on South Colorado Boulevard, said.
Cordova said the union is willing to resume talks, but King Soopers hasn’t provided information it needs on wages, pensions, health care and other items to evaluate the proposal despite repeated requests for the data.
And King Soopers’ latest offer contained unacceptable provisions, Cordova added, including restrictions on workers’ ability to work overtime; shortening the time for workers who are on leave of absence; and the refusal to address proposals to end a two-tier pay structure in the contract.
Wages are a major concern for union members. Barbara Hunter, a meat clerk who has worked at King Soopers for more than two years, said her 16-year-old daughter makes more money, earning $16 an hour compared to Hunter’s $13.60 an hour at a store on South Wadsworth Boulevard in Littleton.
Employees blamed staffing shortages on low wages. King Soopers has acknowledged having about 2,100 openings in King Soopers and City Market stores in the region, but said industries nationwide are grappling with labor shortages.
Safety was another big topic for workers walking the picket lines Wednesday. They said the controls and sanitation efforts put in place when the pandemic hit in 2020 have largely been dropped. They said the company doesn’t enforce mask mandates for the public and employees are left to deal with irate customers on their own.
Noden, who took part in the last King Soopers strike in 1996, said working during the pandemic has been stressful. She said the company provided security guards early during the COVID-19 outbreak, but, along with “hazard” pay, pulled the guards after a couple of months.
The union has requested armed security guards to deal with any altercations and what it says is rising crime in areas where stores are located as well as thefts and robberies in the stores. Three security guards were standing outside the King Soopers store on South Colorado Boulevard on Wednesday morning.
“Once we told them we were going on strike yesterday, we had a full-time security guard in there from the moment I walked in the door until I left,” Haymore. “The minute we’re going on strike, your product, your stuff might be in jeopardy. That’s when you’re going to bring in security.”
Two security guards were at the front entrance of a King Soopers store on South University Boulevard in Highlands Ranch. Workers on the picket line were gathered on the other side of the street. Suzy Vidger, a 17-year employee, said workers were told by store managers that they couldn’t be in front of the store because it was private property .
“We were told that if we picketed across that way, we would be arrested,” Vidger said. “We were also told today that there was a possibility if we parked in the parking lot, we could be towed.”
The strike affects the King Soopers stores where the union’s contracts expired Jan. 8. The stores are in the following cities: Denver, Arvada, Aurora, Boulder, Broomfield, Centennial, Commerce City, Edgewater, Englewood, Evergreen, Federal Heights, Glendale, Golden, Greenwood Village, Highlands Ranch, Lakewood, Littleton, Louisville, Thornton, Westminster and Wheat Ridge.
The union’s contracts with other King Soopers and City Market stores expire later in January and in February. The union is still negotiating with Albertsons, which owns Albertsons and Safeway stores in the state.
The union filed a federal lawsuit against King Soopers in late December, accusing the company of unfair labor practices. King Soopers filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board Tuesday accusing the union of the same thing.
King Soopers has been advertising for temporary replacement workers, and the company announced Wednesday morning that its stores will remain open through the strike.
Union members from across the country have traveled to Colorado to support striking workers, Cordova said.
Members of the @UFCW_7 are on the picket lines at a King Soopers store on South Colorado Boulevard. Thousands of workers from Boulder to Parker started at5 a.m. this morning after talks with King Soopers failed to reach an agreement. pic.twitter.com/ndNWz3lSiY
— Judith Kohler (@JudithKohler) January 12, 2022
The last strike by grocery workers in Colorado was in 1996. Union members at King Soopers walked off the job and Safeway and Albertsons eventually locked out union members. The strike lasted 42 days.
