The unfair labor practice strike that thousands of Portland Fred Meyer workers voted to authorize Saturday will not impact Clark County stores.
Members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555 union, which represents about 4,500 Fred Meyer employees in the Portland area, overwhelmingly supported the strike during votes at multiple locations between Aug. 13 and 16. The union alleges Fred Meyer committed multiple unfair labor practices throughout the process of bargaining for a new contract.
The 1,100 Fred Meyer workers across Southwest Washington will not be affected because they are within separate contractual groups not currently in the process of negotiations, union communications coordinator Miles Eshaia said. There are multiple contracts in Washington, but the labor contract for workers in Vancouver is set to expire in January.
Fred Meyer President Todd Kammeyer said the company has delivered on its promise to accelerate association wages in the last year by raising the current average hourly wage in the Portland area to $20.98 per hour, with some associates making more than $23.34.
However, union leaders say Fred Meyer, which is a subsidiary of The Kroger Co., has continued to violate labor laws.
“The most outrageous examples include refusing to provide essential information for current negotiations and refusing to process grievances, despite a long-standing history of doing so over the many decades between Fred Meyer and Local 555,” the union’s president, Dan Clay, said.
No date has been selected for the Portland area strike, but the vote authorizes Local 555 leadership to call for one at any time. In addition to the strike authorization, Local 555 has retracted its support for the Kroger-Albertsons merger.
Kroger and Albertsons announced in October 2022 their intention to merge, allowing Kroger to acquire all of Albertsons’ shares for $24.6 billion and assume $4.7 billion of Albertsons’ debt. Eleven stores in Clark County will be sold as part of the merger.
“While our Local was the only Local to publicly support the merger of Kroger and Albertsons, we have changed our position as a result of new information as part of the bargaining process,” Clay said in a news release.
The Federal Trade Commission has sued to block the merger. The merger has also received criticism from Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, whose office filed an antitrust lawsuit to block it in January.
Kroger and Albertsons own more than half of Washington’s supermarkets and are two of the largest grocery retailers in the state, according to the attorney general’s office. The trial for the antitrust lawsuit is set for September.
“At Fred Meyer, we know that our associates are the heartbeat of our business, that’s why we continue to put them first by delivering on our promise to accelerate associate wages and balancing that investment to keep groceries affordable for our customers,” Kammeyer said.
