Safeway workers in more parts of Colorado hit the picket lines amid union’s strike

Update on June 17: Workers at one of the Safeway stores in Grand Junction the strike today, according to a social media post by the labor union.

Colorado grocery workers who went on strike at a handful of Safeway stores over the weekend were joined Monday by employees and the location on Mineral Ave.

That brings the number of locations on strike to seven, which includes stores in Estes Park, Fountain, two in Pueblo, plus a Safeway distribution center in Denver. Workers are on the picket lines to protest understaffing, proposed cuts to employee health care benefits and a change to pension benefits for retired workers. 

Kim Cordova, president of United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 7, vowed that more of the 105 Safeway and Albertsons stores in the state could join the strike if an impasse between Albertsons-owned Safeway and the labor union isn’t resolved.

Safeway officials Monday said they’re “disappointed the union has chosen to strike some of our stores,” spokesperson Heather Halpape said in an email. 

Union claims of unfair labor practices “are without merit,” she said, as the company is negotiating in good faith, though no specifics were shared. 

The company, Halpape added, is trying to “achieve a balanced agreement that rewards our associates, benefits our customers, and is sustainable for our company in the competitive grocery industry.”

All Safeway stores in Colorado remain open. 

Starting in late May, union workers from stores in Boulder, Broomfield, Denver, Brighton, Evergreen, Idaho Springs, Estes Park, Fountain, Castle Rock, Grand Junction, Vail, Salida, Pueblo, Parker and the meat departments in stores of Conifer and Steamboat Springs began a strike. 

Union members in Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Greeley, Longmont and Loveland on whether to authorize the strike. The union said there are about 7,000 Safeway workers in Colorado represented by the union.

But the union declined to share which stores would join next, alluding in that doing so would tip off the company on which stores to hire temporary workers next.

Local 7 also represents about 10,000 grocery workers employed by King Soopers and City Market, which are owned by Kroger.

Employee contracts at both grocery chains began expiring in January. That triggered 77 King Soopers stores in the Denver metro area to go on strike for nearly two weeks in February. 

But with no new contract for King Soopers still, those workers could strike again, Cordova said.

Another reason for the current impasse is that Safeway negotiators are following the lead of King Soopers, which Cordova accused of trying to force a multi-employer negotiation. 

She said she doesn’t want a repeat of 1996 when King Soopers workers went on strike and then out their union employees. 

“Safeway hasn’t had a labor dispute for 29 years. And that lockout was triggered when they held hands with King Soopers. That’s one of the big reasons why we don’t bargain that way to give them that kind of power,” Cordova said. “When we started this process in October, the companies were trying to merge. … They were slow rolling because they didn’t know and we didn’t know who we were going to be bargaining with. They were waiting for the merger to happen.”

Albertsons , leaving 103 Safeways and two Albertsons stores in Colorado today. In 2022, Kroger proposed a $24.6 billion merger with Albertsons, which was heavily opposed by the labor union.

In December, Albertsons broke off the proposed merger with King Soopers’ parent Kroger after a federal judge halted the consolidation. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser had also sued to block the merger over antitrust concerns.  

Had it gone through as the grocery chains proposed, Kroger would have have essentially acquired Albertsons, kept 14 Safeways in Colorado but divested the rest in the state to a wholesale grocery chain in New Hampshire to minimize antitrust concerns. 

“Before we struck (at King Soopers), Albertsons-Safeway had entered into an extension agreement with us. We had not even talked economics with them,” Cordova said. “Kroger is really driving the cadence here.”

Several other grocery labor unions in the U.S. also appear on the verge of a strike in what “the largest coordinated strike authorization in UFCW history.” In the past two months, local UFCW members in , , and have authorized strikes or are considering a vote to authorize one. That’s roughly 60,000 workers, excluding Colorado, according to the .