Kroger Executive Shuffle Does Little to Address Underlying Problems with Understaffing

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

April 17, 2025

CONTACT: Monique Palacios

mpalacios@ufcw7.com | 303-425-0897 ext. 403 

Joe Kelley’s Tenure as President of King Soopers

Included 2 Strikes in 3 Years

Denver, CO – On April 15th, Kroger announced a national shake-up and shuffle with some of its executives including a key change in Colorado. Joe Kelley, who had served as the President of King Soopers and City Market, during the most recent state-wide grocery store strike earlier this year, and also the 2022 strike, was one of the announced changes. He will be leaving Colorado’s stores and becoming Kroger’s Senior Vice President of Retail Divisions. The shake-up follows a surprise departure of Kroger’s CEO last month with still-unexplained unethical conduct.

“Joe Kelley was in charge of our Kroger-owned King Soopers & City Market stores as they developed a severe staffing crisis. He was in charge when Kroger executives illegally arranged a back-room deal with Albertsons in 2022 that harmed workers during our strike. And he was in charge of these same stores over the past six months of contract negotiations that led to a massive 79 store strike at King Soopers stores from Denver to Pueblo,” said Kim Cordova, President of UFCW Local 7 whose King Soopers members went on an 11-day unfair labor practice Strike in February of 2025.

Local 7 and King Soopers and City Market remain far apart in contract negotiations over successor agreements covering workers in Colorado that began expiring on January 4, but the union and employer continued to meet on April 16 and 17 for negotiations.

Cordova continued, “What workers and customers need is real reform of King Soopers and City Market with better staffing, lower prices, and improved safety. Moreover, customers need to be secure in the knowledge that the price they are paying at the register is the same price that is advertised on the shelf. Playing musical chairs with executives absent a commitment to make these changes is of no consequence. In some ways it shows how out of touch their new CEO Ron Sergeant is when he praises Mr. Kelley in their press release as having ‘a strong track record of making stores great places to shop.’ This leadership change does present a strategic opportunity for new King Soopers and City Market President Chris Albi to reset the Company’s relationship with workers by negotiating to a fair and equitable contract with workers instead of the Company’s previous path which involved wholesale rejection of worker proposals.” 

One of the many grocery store workers who is on the union bargaining team in negotiations added his frustration at this re-arranging the deck chairs approach of Kroger. “Frankly, we have real problems every day in our stores that have been going on for years. Kroger continues to refuse to schedule sufficient staff to allow us to get our work done and to serve our customers. For six months they have continued to refuse to make a compromise solution on staffing, on wage increases, on safety and many other problems,” said Conor Hall who works in the Deli at a King Soopers store in Boulder. “Mr. Kelley was not running our stores in a way that was good for either workers or shoppers. But honestly Kroger’s the one calling the shots so changing who oversees King Soopers in Colorado without making real changes for how the company is run won’t do anything.”

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Local 7, the largest private-sector Union in Colorado, is affiliated with United Food and Commercial Workers International Union which represents over 1.3 million workers in the United States and Canada, and is one of the largest private-sector Unions in North America. UFCW members work in a wide range of industries, including retail food, food processing, agriculture, retail sales, and health care.