Portland Grocery, Meat, & CCK Bargaining Update

March 4, 2009

Things are progressing slowly in Portland negotiations because of big issues such as pensions. Recently UFCW Local 555 Secretary-Treasurer Jeff Anderson wrote an informative article detailing some of the challenges with regard to pensions. Read the article

The next dates for Portland negotiations are March 16 & 17. Please check back for an update. Your bargaining team with President Dan Clay and Secretary-Treasurer Jeff Anderson in attendance, held bargaining sessions with the Employers on January 14^th and 15^th.

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February 19, 2009

The bargaining parties met on February 17, 2009 with the entire discussion centered on health care. The parties are jointly requesting information on the cost of various changes and improvements to the plan from the consultant. The report will center on the cost associated with changes such as: increasing the deductible by $50.00 per year, adding 80% coverage for Level 1 (up from about 50% coverage), adding and improving dental benefits to Level 2, bumping all current employees in Level 1 to Level 2 coverage upon ratification, adding same sex domestic partners, improving chiropractic benefits, adding acupuncture benefits, raising the co-pays for prescription drugs, allowing prescription to 100 units doses (instead of capping at 34 days), significantly improving the dental and orthodontia benefits, and making a couple dozen other less dramatic changes.

Some of the changes the bargaining team liked and some they did not like. Currently, what we are doing is figuring out the cost of the medical provided for you by the Portland Area UFCW Local 555 Employers Health Trust Plan. On March 16th and 17th, we will be sitting down with the Employers again to make further determinations as to what your plan will look like going forward.

The Employer group is very interested in seeing money come from your paychecks to pay for part of your healthcare benefits. Although the last contract opened the door for that possibility, the cost of the plan didn’t go up enough to require you to make a contribution. The possibility that healthcare costs will stay low enough so that no contribution is required is comparatively unlikely. Also the proposed improvements in the plan may require some contribution.

We have not yet addressed pay adjustments; we will be dealing with wages and pensions (including the Bend Area wage issue) after the health care funding issues are resolved.

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January 29, 2009

Message from Collective Bargaining Director Ken Spray::

Your bargaining team met with the Employers on January 28th to hash out the funding for health care, a top priority for the membership and the union leadership. We reviewed a health care proposal from the employer, which identified the components of our health care plan in the Portland area. As a result, we offered a counter proposal that we believe would be best for our members. The employer and the union health care proposals need to be reviewed by the health care consultants from the trust to identify the actual cost associated with the proposals. The employer will be having their proposal reviewed and have the consultant determine the actual cost needed to provide secure funding for current and future years.

Since this will take time for the consultant to determine, both parties agreed to cancel the bargaining session scheduled for January 29, 2009. We have scheduled our next bargaining session for February 17, 2009. This meeting will deal exclusively with determining the funding for health care and it is our intention to do all we can to reach agreement.

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January 14, 2009

Message from UFCW Local 555 Collective Bargaining Director Ken Spray:

On the 144^th, we were successful in getting the Employers to withdraw some of their proposed contract takeaways.

We resolved some language issues that have no impact on your contract. Those language issues dealt with changing the Employers’ representative name to Allied Employer and deleting references to container clerks which is no longer a position in the stores thus no need for a classification.

We reviewed Health Care issues with the Employers and expressed the need to secure sufficient funding for the Health Care plan for the term of the contract.

Most of Thursday the 15^th was spent dealing with Christmas Day opening. Eugene has Christmas Day opening language for the first time and the Employers are having some problems with implementation. We have grievances filed and we will be working with the Employers through the grievance procedure to resolve these issues. If we can work out those problems, then it might be something the bargaining team will look at.

The Employer did not propose any wage increases at this time. We informed the Employers we want no part of bonuses, only hard money wage increases.