King Soopers employee union votes to strike, could walk off job this week

DENVER — Members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, which represents the King Soopers employees along the Front Range in a contract dispute with the grocer, voted overwhelmingly in favor of a strike, a move that could mean job walk offs when the current contract expires Saturday night. 

The vote is a result of a  “campaign of unfair labor practices, which have been undertaken in an effort

to prevent workers from securing a new contract advancing wages, health, and retirement benefits, and ensuring a safe place for employees to work and customers to shop,” UFCW said in a news release. 

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Locally, 100% of Boulder meat workers, and 100% of Broomfield meat and retail workers voted in favor of the strike. 

“The company must cease these unrelenting and illegal tactics,” Local 7 president Kim Cordova said in the release. “King Soopers and City Market have missed a golden opportunity to show workers and customers that as the industry leader, they want to make their stores the best places to work in Colorado. Local 7 will not rest until we secure a contract that respects, protects, and pays these essential grocery workers.”

In a statement, King Soopers struck an equally confrontational tone. 

“We take our obligation to provide our communities with access to fresh food and other essentials very seriously,” the statement said. “At a time when Coloradans are coming together to support our communities the UFCW L 7 is threatening disruption?”

The company continued: “Let’s be clear, Local 7 issued a strike authorization vote related to alleged unfair labor practices. These allegations are just that, allegations, as King Soopers/City Market has followed the law and has NOT received any notice of wrongdoing from the National Labor Relations Board.”

King Soopers is also levying unfair labor practice against Cordova and the union, “for its bad faith bargaining and tactics as well as pursuing other legal action for unlawful conduct,” the company said.   

The strike vote comes just days after the union filed suit against King Soopers, alleging that replacement workers were brought on to do work that was covered by Local 7’s collective bargaining agreement.

According to the lawsuit filed this week in U.S. District Court in Denver, King Soopers contracted with staffing company Retail Odyssey Co., employees of which were observed in stores around Denver and Colorado Springs performing functions such as stocking shelves. 

The union’s contract prohibits non-union workers from being hired to perform most tasks beyond sanitation and floor cleaning. 

By ignoring the collective bargaining agreement, King Soopers is filling a human resources void with workers for whom it needn’t provide benefits, UFCW claims. This allows King Soopers to pay these non-union workers — who the union calls scabs — more than UFCW members, damaging the union’s negotiating position. 

“The alleged lack of bargaining unit workers available at current wage rates places substantial economic pressure on the defendant to negotiate higher wage rates in the successor agreements. By circumventing the bargaining unit work protections, King Soopers is artificially limiting economic pressures to raise wages,” said the lawsuit, which cites observed incidents of CBA violations in stores in Lakewood, Golden and Greenwood Village

King Soopers claims to have recently offered the union a new contract that includes the addition of $145 million in new wages over the next four years. The Kroger-owned grocery chain said that under the deal, 75% of associates would earn an average hourly wage or at least $18, with more than 50% of employees earning more than $20 per hour. 

“We care deeply about our associates and know that a work stoppage creates a troubling position that often leads to financial hardships for our associates,” King Soopers said in a statement this week. “Respectfully, we ask Local 7 to put people before politics and do the work our associates have paid them nearly $20 million over the last three years to do, negotiate on their behalf.  We remain committed to bargaining in good faith and to settling a contract that is good for our associates while keeping groceries affordable for our customers.”

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