Workers approve contract

Most of the information is not original reporting. Information has been compiled from The Washington Post.

Employees of Giant Food LLC and Safeway Inc. approved a new four-year contract March 30 to avoid a potential strike that could have hampered business for two of the largest supermarkets in the D.C. area.

According to Blair senior Michael Hayes, who works at the Safeway in Silver Spring, workers were excited to keep their jobs because going on strike would cause them to lose lots of money in missed wages.

Giant and Safeway stores closed from 7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Tuesday, March 30, to allow workers to gather at the D.C. Armory and vote on the new contract. The vast majority of the 12,000 D.C. area employees who attended the meeting voted to ratify the new contract, avoiding a strike that could have been similar to the five-month-long campaign by Safeway employees in California.

Representatives of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) called the new contract a victory for the workers as healthcare and retirement benefits remain largely unaltered while hourly wages increase.

The chains had been trying to cut healthcare and wage costs in order to increase profits and compete with non-union stores like Wal-Mart. Safeway and Giant were able to cut wages and benefits for new employees, which will provide the companies with increased profits.

New employees will be impacted the most by the new contract as they will have to pay higher healthcare premiums and will receive lower pay for working Sundays and holidays. However, after six years, new workers will receive the same benefits and wages as veteran employees.

The UFCW and the supermarket chains were fairly satisfied with the agreement as the current employees did not lose healthcare benefits and the company was able to reduce expenditures. Representatives of the UFCW and Safeway wanted to avoid a repeat of the costly strike in California, which cost the supermarket hundreds of millions of dollars and employees five months of wages.

Workers were excited to avoid a potentially bitter and long strike, but were unhappy with some of the new concessions, especially cuts for new employees, which some speculate may cause a decline in new applicants for Safeway and Giant jobs and discourage new employees to work hard.

According to Nancy Matherly, a clerk at a Leesburg Giant store for 25 years, customer service will decline because of the cuts for new employees. "You're going to have people in there making $8 an hour on a Sunday working with people making $35 an hour. It's going to be hard to motivate them," said Matherly.