In a victory for workers, five locals of the United Food Workers Union recently signed their new contract with Stop and Shop.
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Stop and Shop grocery stores are located in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. Stop and Shop is among the most profitable companies in the grocery business. During the first half of 2009, the company had net sales of $9.4 billion and an operating income of $442 million.
Despite its profits, the company used contract negotiations to push for doubling workers’ health insurance premiums and force workers to accept “bonuses” rather than wage increases. These so-called bonuses would not be guaranteed, nor would they be permanent. Even worse, the company was offering a wage package that would be swallowed up by increased health care payments. The offer was worth less than what Stop and Shop takes in over the period of a few days.
At the same time, the company was proposing to buy out 18 Shaw’s non-union grocery stores in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Vermont.
The workers at Stop and Shop know that they are the ones who make the company profitable. When all profits are the product of the workers’ labor, the demand that a portion of that profit be used to meet their needs is indeed a modest one. The workers have the right to health care and job protection. Union locals joined in solidarity and rejected Stop and Shop’s proposed contract.
The union members knew their strength was in their unity and the company would not be able to operate without their labor. On March 3, Local 371 gave a 24-hour strike notice. The next day, the four remaining New England UFCW locals—328, 919, 1445 and 1459—delivered their strike notices. They felt the “negotiations” had gone on long enough, and it was time for the company to listen to the workers’ demands or face a unified job action.
Stop and Shop management caved. On March 4—11 days after negotiations had begun—the new contract was signed, entitling workers to a 25 cent raise every year, a minimal monthly increase in medical benefit payments and a guaranteed bonus to every employee. The contract also includes medical benefits for part-time employees.
In a time of high unemployment, management will try to squeeze as much as they can out of workers, betting that workers will concede rather than risk their jobs. However, a unified strike of all five locals would have deprived Stop and Shop of 36,000 employees and severely crippled its New England operations. Rather than concede, the workers stood together and called the company’s bluff. In a time of economic crisis, unified struggle is the workers’ only option to beat back the bosses’ offensive.
