Eugene/Springfield grocery
workers ratify new pacts
EUGENE — Following more than 12
months of bargaining, grocery clerks, meatcut-
ters and central checkout employees finally have
new contract with area grocers in Eugene-
Springfield.
About 1,100 workers — members of United
Food and Commercial Workers Local 555 —
ratified new four-year contracts Jan. 17 by mar-
gins of 90 to 100 percent. The contracts run
retroactive to when they expired in February
2007. The union workers are employed at Safe-
way stores, Supervalu (which now owns Albert-
sons), and Kroger (parent company of Fred
Meyer).
Some of the key provisions in the deal in-
clude hard-money wage increases (not bonuses
in lieu of wages, as employers initially tried to
get). Wages will increase $1.30 an hour over the
life of the agreement, retroactive to February
2007. There will be no health reimbursement ac-
counts (which would have resulted in large in-
creases in deductibles), and employees may vol-
unteer to work Christmas Day, but can’t be
scheduled to work.
Union officials said grocers came to the table
with more than 40 takeaway items.
“This (settlement) happened not because the
employers felt generous, but because our Bar-
gaining Committee was firm in what they
wanted, and the community and membership in
the Eugene/Springfield area stood strong,” said
Local 555 Secretary-Treasurer Jeff McDonald.
UFCW knew going in that negotiations
would be difficult, so they began preparing a
year in advance of the expiration date. Meetings
were held monthly to inform members on im-
portant bargaining issues, such as how pensions
work, how the health and welfare trust operates,
and the importance of language in the contract.
“These meetings gave the membership the
knowledge and ability to understand and talk
with the management negotiators,” McDonald
said. It also didn’t go unnoticed that during ne-
gotiations members held several community ral-
lies to show their solidarity. They also voted to
authorize a strike by an overwhelming margin.
UFCW now turns its attention to bargaining
grocery, meat and central checkout contracts at
Safeway, Albertsons and Fred Meyer stores in
Vancouver, Wash., Salem, Corvallis, Medford,
Roseburg, Coos Bay and Brookings.
Contracts in The Dalles and Hood River ex-
pire May 31. Contracts expire in Portland, Bend,
and Newport July 26.
Members of UFCW Local 555 vote on new grocery contracts Jan. 17 at the Lane Events Center
(Fairgrounds Auditorium) in Eugene. Contracts for grocery clerks, meatcutters and central
checkout employees were ratified by wide margins.
Washington labor turns attention to Olympia
OLYMPIA — Washington’s labor
movement will be paying close attention
to Olympia in the next two months, and
pushing for passage of a handful of bills
that would expand worker rights.
ATU #757 calls off
ambulance strike in
Josephine County
GRANTS PASS — Amalga-
mated Transit Union Local 757 has
called off an unfair labor practice
strike at American Medical Re-
sponse (AMR) in Josephine
County.
Paramedics and EMTs gave no-
tice to strike Jan. 17 after the com-
pany refused to provide financial
documents to support a claim that it
was losing money in Josephine
County that required deep financial
cuts from its 33 bargaining unit em-
ployees.
A week after receiving the strike
notice, AMR changed its position on
the documents, and the union re-
ceived some of them.
“We have sent those documents
to our CPA for analysis,” said ATU
Local 757 President Jon Hunt.
“These documents were the key rea-
son for our strike. Now that AMR is
providing the documents, we be-
lieve the need for the strike is over.”
A federal mediator called the
parties back into negotiations Jan.
17 that lasted for 12 hours. The par-
ties are scheduled to meet again with
the mediator on Feb. 11.
FEBRUARY 1, 2008
The State Legislature meets annually
in Washington, with shorter, 60-day ses-
sions in even-numbered years.
The Washington State Labor Coun-
cil, the statewide AFL-CIO body, identi-
fied several bills as priorities in the Leg-
islature’s 2008 session, which began
Jan. 14:
•Expanding the collective bargain-
ing rights of graduate teaching and
research assistants. Grad students
working at the University of Washing-
ton won the right to unionize in 2002,
and today about 4,700 belong to United
Auto Workers Local 4121. Now a bill
would extend union rights to about
1,700 graduate assistants at Washington
State University, which has campuses in
Pullman and Vancouver.
•Restoring unemployment insur-
ance benefits to workers locked out by
their employers during labor disputes
in multi-employer bargaining units.A
lockout is the employer equivalent of a
strike. The grocery industry is an exam-
ple of where this would make a differ-
ence. The United Food and Commercial
Workers Union negotiates area-wide
contracts with an employer association.
In some cases, if the union can’t get an
acceptable contract, workers may strike
just one employer; employers, in soli-
darity, then might lock out workers at
another employer to starve the union
back to the table. If employers know the
locked out workers will get unemploy-
ment insurance, they’ll be much less
likely to use that tactic.
•Giving whistleblower protection
to state workers. This is the top priority
of the Washington State Labor Council’s
biggest affiliate — the 40,000-member
Washington Federation of State Em-
ployees. WFSE, part of AFSCME, has
more than doubled in the last five years
since the passage of a law that gave state
workers the right to bargain a union con-
tract.
•Granting benefits while a
worker’s compensation case is being
appealed. Right now, says WSLC Pres-
ident Rick Bender, workers whose
claims are denied don’t get benefits
while they appeal the rejection, and
many who have been wrongly denied
benefits are forced by economic hard-
ship to settle their cases.
WSLC is also backing Gov. Chris
Gregoire’s “Climate Action and Green
Jobs” bill. The bill would direct the State
Department of Ecology to design a re-
gional carbon “cap and trade” proposal;
require annual emissions reporting by all
significant generators of greenhouse
gases; and create new “green collar
jobs” programs to provide training and
apprenticeship opportunities.
And labor is supporting several
health care reform proposals. One
would create a work group to design a
comprehensive health insurance pro-
gram for Washingtonians. Another
would require insurance companies to
justify any rate hikes to the state insur-
ance commissioner.
“The good news is we won’t be play-
ing much defense,” Bender said. De-
mocrats have the governor’s office and a
substantial majority in the Legislature,
including 34 of the 49 state senators, and
66 of the 98 state representatives.
Supreme Court rejects case by
Enron investors, union workers
WASHINGTON, D.C. (PAI) —
Unions and advocates for workers and
shareholders who have lost billions of
dollars to corporate fraud over the last
several years were disappointed by the
U.S. Supreme Court’s Jan. 22 ruling in a
case involving Enron.
In a ruling without comment, the jus-
tices rejected a case by Enron investors
— led by the University of California —
who said the banks that colluded with
Enron on the shady deals that led to its
collapse should be open to lawsuits, too.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Ap-
peals in New Orleans turned that down.
Last week the High Court did, too.
Unions and worker pension funds
were among the investors who joined
the university in arguing that the banks
and other colluders in such cases should
be legally liable for the losses, too.
Instead, the justices said only the
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS
company involved — Enron in this case
— can be taken to trial by anyone who
charges their money was fraudulently
lost. The court’s ruling disappointed the
AFL-CIO. The federation’s Office of In-
vestment has actively supported share-
holders — including union pension
funds — challenging not just the mis-
managed companies but also the
bankers.
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney
even connected the court’s ruling to the
Bush Administration, saying it reflects
the court’s direction since it declared
Bush won the 2000 presidential elec-
tion.
“For the last five years, lower courts
have been considering whether the pow-
erful, politically connected financial in-
stitutions at the center of the Enron fraud
will have to answer to investors for what
they did. Now we have the final answer
from the Supreme Court: They will not.
“The Enron financial fraud cost
America’s working families tens of bil-
lions of dollars in lost retirement as-
sets,” Sweeney continued. “For thou-
sands of Enron employees, whose
401(k) plans were locked into Enron
stock, the losses were personally cata-
strophic.”
That included unionized employees
at Portland General Electric in Portland,
represented by Electrical Workers Lo-
cal 125.
“At the center of the fraud were deals
Enron did with major financial institu-
tions, whose clear purpose was to hide
the true state of Enron’s finances,”
Sweeney said. “...The decision not to
hear a case that corporate big shots do
not want heard fits very nicely with the
overall direction of our legal system
since Bush v. Gore.”
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