UFCW Grocery Workers Rally at Albertsons Headquarters to Demand Supermarket Back up Contract Claims
BUENA PARK, Calif.--Ahead of a June 21st deadline for a contract settlement, hundreds of union members and grocery workers plan to rally at Albertsons corporate headquarters (1421 S. Manhattan Ave.) at 3 p.m. in Fullerton on Thursday, June 14, to demand a fair contract for grocery store employees.
Demonstrators will insist that Albertsons President Pete Van Helden sign a pledge card guaranteeing the solvency of the health care trust fund that has paid the medical bills of grocery workers and their families for almost a half-century. Albertsons has proposed a funding plan that the union contends could bankrupt that fund.
The United Food and Commercial Workers Local 324 and six other UFCW locals are in negotiations with Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons for nearly six months, and are three months past the expiration of their original contract. Grocery workers have not had a wage increase since 2002, and half of all grocery workers in Southern California, as well as 20,000 children of grocery workers, are without healthcare.
Union officials accuse grocery employers of attempting to scuttle negotiations by deliberately under-funding the proposed contract’s health care fund, risking a mid-contract health care fund bankruptcy that could threaten benefits for over 100,000 grocery workers in Southern California.
Union health care funding experts have determined that the supermarket employers’ plan falls far short of the funding needed to keep the plan solvent through the life of the contract.
In at least six other contracts around the country, supermarket employers have under funded health care plans, forcing massive benefit cuts or dramatic premium increases to avoid bankruptcy. Union experts contend that same scenario could play out in Southern California as well.
“It is a very simple concept,” said Teferi Gebre of the Orange County Central Labor Council. “They are insisting that their current health care proposal includes enough funding, but our experts disagree. Grocery workers are asking Van Helden to put his money where his mouth is and sign a written pledge personally guaranteeing to make up any shortages with either Albertsons’ funds or Van Helden’s own personal money.”
