Strike authorization leads to new pact for D.C. Giant and Safeway workers

Landover, MD (PAI) — The plan of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 400 to take a strike authorization vote led the two big food chains, Giant and Safeway, which dominate the D.C. metro market, to settle on a new tentative agreement with the  union.

The four-year TA was signed within two days after the old four-year contract expired on Oct. 28, covering 18,500 workers combined at the two chains, with about 63 percent of them at Giant, union communications director Jonathan Williams said.

“We want to thank all of you for standing strong throughout this process. Without our unity, we could never have achieved the agreement we have negotiated today,” the union said in a statement.

WHAT’S IN THE AGREEMENT
The Metropolitan Washington Central Labor Council reported the tentative agreement  would give raises for all top-rated food clerks hired before March 5, 2020—in other words, pre-pandemic — of $1.10 an hour in its first year and a dollar an hour in each of three following years. Department heads will get additional 25 cent raises the first two years. Workers with more than 12 years’ service will get four years of vacation.

Williams elaborated on those numbers: “The raises are just ‘top of scale’ raises for food clerks who have been at the companies so long they exceeded the wage scales. Overall, the average raise is 24 percent over four years. We also won no increases in health care costs over the next four years and improved language on minimum hours for part timers, pension benefits, and store safety,” he added.

HEALTH CARE COST FREEZE
The health care cost freeze is especially important for grocery workers, whose jobs, especially stocking and loading carts and trucks to get food and goods into and around stores, are extremely physical, leaving them prone to workplace ills.

STORE SAFETY
Store safety is also important to the workers. In the union’s last bulletin before settling on the TA, it said: “We went to work every day during the height of the Covid pandemic, putting ourselves and our families at risk to keep our customers fed and our employers profitable. And now we go to work with the constant threat of violent customers, shoplifters, and even mass shooters coming into our stores and threatening our safety and our lives.”