UFCW Local 7 Statement on Contract Negotiations with Kroger’s King Soopers & City Market
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
January 15, 2025
CONTACT: Kim Cordova
kcordova@ufcw7.com | 303-425-0897 ext. 402
Statement:
Kroger Continues to Ignore Worker’s Proposals at the Bargaining Table, and Instead Seeks to Deceive Employees into a Concessionary Offer
Denver, CO – While King Soopers’ parent company Kroger is working to pay Wall Street investors $7.5 Billion, its proposals to Colorado grocery store workers continue to show a level of disrespect and deception that equal its illegal bargaining tactics of three years ago. Kroger seems hell bent on forcing customers and workers to pay for the exorbitant costs of the failed attempted merger with Safeway/Albertsons.
Kroger continues to ignore Union proposals and has failed to meaningfully engage with the Union on fixing the staffing crisis in our Colorado grocery stores. Inadequate staffing in the stores has led to empty shelves, poor customer service, prices on the shelves not matching prices customers’ pay at the register, and shuttered delis, meat departments, and pharmacies.
The company’s proposals to workers are likewise inadequate, proposing cuts to health care benefits, slashing seniority-based scheduling benefits which will only further erode staffing in the stores, and a wage offer that is far too low to live in Colorado. The Company is also proposing to rob retiree health benefits and underfund the pension plan in order to pay for meager wage increases for a few workers. Moreover, the Company has conditioned its entire offer on the potential terms negotiated with other employers – making the entire Kroger offer illusory.
“We continue to call on King Soopers and City Market to negotiate in good faith and address an increasingly problematic issue of too few staff in the stores and too low wages for the work,” said Kim Cordova, President of UFCW Local 7. “They are trying to pay BILLIONS of dollars to their Wall Street investors, and at the same time offering paltry wage increases to workers and asking workers to fund those increases through cuts to health and other benefits.”
Chris Lacey, a King Soopers worker from Littleton, Colorado added: “The company’s proposals so far are not only inadequate, they are an insult to me and my co-workers who make the stores run every day. If the Company is serious about reaching a resolution before this contract expires then it needs to completely change its approach. Workers are fed up with the Company and its scare tactics. We will not hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to secure a good and fair contract.”
###
Local 7, the largest 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.