President’s Report

 

An Injury to One is an Injury to All

 

Spokane Grocery and Meat Employer Proposal

An arbitrator shall not render an award which requires the employer to pay an improperly discharged or suspended employee for time that employee has not actually worked in excess of the wage and benefits the employee would have earned had he worked his normal schedule during the 90 calendar days immediately following the date of discharge.  Nor shall the arbitrator be entitled to require the employer to pay benefits on behalf of an employee for a time period the employee has not actually worked in excess of the 90 days allowable.

 

UFCW Local 1439’s contracts allow employers to discharge or suspend members only for Just Cause.  In the above employer proposal while they cannot admit that they are unjustly discharging workers, they do admit that they are improperly discharging workers.  The above proposal would prevent the arbitrator from making you whole for all losses suffered after the arbitrator had determined that the employer had unjustly discharged you.

 

The grievance mentioned below is not hypothetical.  It is real.  The member we are talking about will have been fired for close to five months before the employer and/or their representative Allied was able to find the time for a grievance meeting.  We also have not received all the facts that should have been presented to us within 15 days in accordance with the grievance time lines.  Unfortunately, this failure to be concerned with our members’ lives isn’t unusual. I want to tell you what we told them in Spokane negotiations.

 

A few years ago, we agreed to a ten-month cap on employer liability in exchange for a grievance time line with the major grocery industry employers.  Of those employers, only Rosauers has made a good faith effort to abide by that agreement.  The employer representative, Allied, has consistently failed to even attempt to follow the grievance procedure, especially in the representation of the other employers present here today.  In some cases, the callous disregard for our member’s lives appalls us.  How can anyone believe that it is just to treat an unjustly discharged employee in the manner in which he has been treated.  He has been out of work for four months before Allied can even find the time to meet with us and show us what meager evidence they believe will support their case.  All the evidence that caused him to be terminated should have been given to us within less than one month.  That is our agreement.  Allied, through Rosauers, is proposing a 90-day grievance limitation, when the employer, to quote Allied’s proposal, improperly discharges a member.  At the same time, the employer can’t even be bothered to attend a grievance meeting for over four months.

 

I want all employers to understand Local 1439’s staff, Executive Board, and members will not agree to a harsher cap than the one we have already agreed to.  As long as I am President, this Local will never recommend a contract with new language that allows the employer to unjustly discharge one of our members and get away with it.  If other Locals choose to give up Just Cause rights, I feel sorry for their members’ plight, just like I feel sorry for Eastern Oregon members when they are unjustly discharged.  I understand the terrible situation that this language imposes upon our members.  Local 1439 will not give up our members’ Just Cause rights.  Unfortunately, Rosauers isn’t our only concern.  We must be concerned with the employers Rosauers associates with and the employers’ representative, Allied.

 

We further went on to tell them that the Union proposal below is needed because of the way one of the employers operates.  We do not agree with them, Allied, or any arbitrator that it is Just Cause to terminate a human being for one mistake.  “To err is human.”  We all make mistakes at work.  It is not Just Cause to get the employment death penalty, termination from your job, for making one error.

 

UFCW Local 1439, Spokane Grocery & Meat Proposal

Recognizing that inconsistent interpretations of the just cause provision as set forth in Article 4 have caused disruptive labor relations between the parties and that the practice between the parties in Local 1439’s jurisdiction has always been to progressively discipline employees for instances of negligence, the parties agree not to enter or rely upon the following “cash handling cases” decided in the jurisdictions of Local 1105 and Local 367 and to consider these null and void:

 

United Food and Commercial Workers, Local #367 and Allied Employers, Inc., on behalf of Fred Meyers, Inc., (Michael Cavanaugh) dated July 5, 2006.

 

United Food and Commercial Workers, Local #1105 and Fred Meyer, Inc., (Joseph Duffy) dated August 9, 2004. 

 

In solidarity,

 

Larry Hall                                                        

President, UFCW Local 1439