United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 700 members across Indiana voted on July 10 and 11 to reject a tentative agreement (TA) covering eight thousand Kroger retail workers. This is the second contract Kroger workers have rejected, after 74 percent voted down the first offer in May. Local 700 has not announced the vote percentage on the second tentative agreement.
Kroger’s offer included a wage increase of just $0.90 over three years for starting pay, along with a $200 Kroger gift card that members called “insulting.”
“That $200 gift card felt like a huge joke,” said Andrea Reynolds, a twenty-seven-year Kroger worker in Kokomo. “I couldn’t tell you how many contracts I’ve been through, and that is the lowest ratification ‘bonus’ we’ve ever had.”
David Fredrick, a twenty-year drug department manager at Kroger in Indianapolis, posted a skit on social media poking fun at the offer, pretending to pay his electric bill with a Kroger gift card.
The second tentative agreement did include some improvements from the first — the result of one month of intense organizing led entirely by rank-and-file members. The improvements included shortening the contract from four years to three; new, although limited, staffing language; higher wages over a shorter period; and earlier spousal health care coverage.
Yet the offer still didn’t meet members’ needs — nor their higher expectations, raised by member organizing as well as by strong contract campaigns in neighboring unions, such as Teamsters Local 135.
“Members have seen other…
Auteur: Caitlyn Clark
