It was announced on Monday that Supervalu essentially terminated the employment of their CEO Craig Herkert, replacing him temporarily with Chairman of the Board Wayne Sales.  This move is part of recent news that Supervalu plans to sell some or all of the company in the next few months.  Herkert, who we told you in a previous post came from Walmart, definitely took on a company that was in dire financial straits when he assumed the role as CEO of Supervalu.  Unfortunately he really missed the boat when it came to ensuring that the brand and identity of the existing company was recognized by the average consumer.   Continue reading →

We’ll still be here, maintaining this site until all the way up until our next negotiation in July of 2014.  We’ll keep you updated about our parent company, SuperValu, as well as Shoppers Food and Pharmacy.  We’ll also let you know what’s going on with other contracts within Local 400 since as members of Local 400 ACT! we’ll all be supporting each other through every negotiation.

You can also find us on Twitter @Local400ACT and you can check out what’s going on at Giant and Safeway at http://occupygiantandsafeway.org and Occupy Giant and Safeway on Facebook.

For those that haven’t already heard, we successfully ratified a contract with Shoppers Food and Pharmacy today!

With a unanimous vote of Local 400 members at Shoppers, we were able to secure a contract that secures some gains for us.  It’s an amazing victory considering the anti-worker behavior that was illustrated by management at the bargaining table.  Local 400 leadership recognized all of us at the meeting today and attributed our hard work to the delivery of this contract.

It the hard work of our Shoppers Advisory Committee members and other ACT!ivists like us that brought this contract home.  We also believe that the over 600 members that attended the contract meeting did so as a result of our worker-to-worker campaign.  We’d like to thank our fellow union members for their engagement, particularly those at Giant and Safeway that helped keep the pressure on our employer to do the right thing.  We also can’t forget our customers that contacted store management repeatedly to pledge their support and demand that the harassment against us stop.

Please see the press release from the Local union for more information and contact your Local 400 Staff Representative with any questions.

This is a two year agreement which will expire in July of 2014 so our work doesn’t end here.  Please join us so that we can continue to keep our fight for our rights alive.  We’ll see you back on the shop floor, where we’ve proven that real power exists!

If you are being advised by management that you cannot attend the Shoppers contract meeting or that the company is letting people attend in “shifts”, please notify your Local 400 Staff Representative at 1-800-638-0800 right away.  

Each of us is allowed to attend and the company has to let us off of work to do so.  It is their decision to keep the stores open during the contract meeting so it is management’s responsibility to ensure that customers are served while we are gone.  

Please do not miss this opportunity to have a direct say on your working conditions.  It will take all of us to raise our voices and stand united at the contract meeting to send a clear message to Shoppers that we will not be divided.

As of the time of this post, we do not have confirmation from UFCW Local 400 that our contract negotiations have concluded which would in turn provide us with an opportunity to vote on a tentative agreement with Shoppers.  Regardless of this, we will still have a contract meeting on Thursday July 12.  Please see below for details.  Your attendance is CRITICAL in order to hear about the status of our contract first hand from union leadership and fellow union members that were part of the advisory committee.  In the event that an agreement has been reached by July 12 then we will vote on that agreement.  If it has not been reached, we will have different discussions at the meeting regarding our plan to secure a fair contract.  

This has been a VERY difficult negotiation and we must all stand together.

Registration begins at 8:00 AM, Meeting begins at 9:00 AM

Martin’s Crosswinds

7400 Greenway Center Drive

Greenbelt MD 20770 

Please contact UFCW Local 400 if you have any questions regarding this process.  Entrance cards were mailed some time ago to all Local 400 members at Shoppers to your address on file.  Please be sure to bring these with you for quick admission.

We’ll see you on July 12 at 8:00 AM!

Our contract expired over the weekend (July 7 to be exact) and we are still working to secure a fair contract with Shoppers.  We are hopeful that we will have a contract that is signed by both the company and the union that can be presented at our contract meeting which is scheduled for this Thursday.  This has been a very difficult negotiation from the very beginning, even though it didn’t have to be.  Let’s hope that we have a favorable outcome for all of us.

Please do not rely on the word of the company as it pertains to these negotiations.  Your Local 400 staff representatives remain your primary source of information so please check with them for any questions that you might have.  You may reach Local 400 staff at 1-800-638-0800.  We hope to have more details soon about the contract meeting to share with you regarding exactly what we will be doing on that day.  In the meantime, please stay engaged on the shop floor and in your communities.  Our work doesn’t end until we have a ratified agreement!

There’s been little new to report regarding bargaining over the last week yet the company’s violations of labor law against our fellow ACT! members continue to mount.  We hope to have more details for you soon but in the meantime, we urgently need your help.

Please visit your local Shoppers, even if you are not a customer, and tell store management that you demand that they cease their intimidating actions against the workers on the shop floor.  We need your help because it has become clear that Shoppers focus is not about taking care of their employees and customers.  They are doing everything that they can to ensure that the company survives at whatever cost–even if it’s on our backs.

Please spread the word and join us!

We’d like to remind you, yet again, that this negotiation is critical to each and every one of us on the shop floor.  You claim that you are taking this negotiation seriously, yet we aren’t seeing negotiations move closer to an agreement.  It seems like you couldn’t be farther apart from trying to do what’s right by us and in turn, our customers, in this negotiation.

We’re calling on you NOW to stop your threats, your retaliation, your intimidation, and to just negotiate an agreement that is fair and just.  It’s a simple request and it’s the least you can do after all of the hard work that we’ve done for you over the years.

You’re trying to break up our Shoppers family and no one likes a home-wrecker.

Our advisory committee members sat in bargaining yesterday and listened to the company bargaining team. In the meantime, hundreds of union members on the shop floor continued to educate customers about the impact of this negotiation on their families. One thing we all have in common is that we recognize that this is not a game.

Management may believe that this negotiation is like a game of chess, scrabble, poker, etc. but rest assured it is by no means a game. We depend on our pay and benefits to take care of our families. We count on the fact that our customers continue to come back to see us when they do their weekly grocery shopping. We recognize that despite Supervalu’s financial blunders in the past, they are on track to bring their numbers back into the black.

Let us remind you–this is not a game, this is our lives. We hope that our company management team is reading this and they reconsider when they decide to retaliate on us for standing up for our customers and our stores. We take this very seriously…and we hope you will start to do so as well.

There’s only a few more days until July 7 and we are far away from reaching an agreement. Shoppers: The timer is running out and it’s time to bargain in good faith.

This just in—

Over the last week, we’ve received word that several of our fellow members of our advisory committee have been given words of warning from store management that violate our legal protections under the National Labor Relations Act.  We’ve been told in some cases that we can’t talk to customers at all and that our negotiations are an “internal” matter.  This is completely inaccurate.  What happens as part of this negotiation can and will impact our customers.  Some of us have even been approached by management when we are off the clock, shopping as customers ourselves. Continue reading →