Retail  January 15, 2025

King Soopers, union enter last-minute negotiations on new labor contract

Could another strike be on the horizon?

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WESTMINSTER — Negotiators with King Soopers and United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, the union that represents thousands of the Kroger Co.-owned (NYSE: KR) grocery chain’s employees in Colorado, are meeting Wednesday and Thursday in Westminster in an effort to hammer out the details of a new labor contract.

In early January, the sides agreed to a two-week contract extension to provide some breathing room for more bargaining. But if a deal isn’t reached this week, there’s a real chance that UFCW workers, who went on strike in January 2022 when negotiations over the most-recent labor agreement broke down, could hit the picket lines again.

“We are hopeful that they will be ready to engage in meaningful negotiations focused on reaching a fair agreement, in a timely manner, that invests in our associates’ paychecks while keeping groceries affordable for Coloradans,” a King Soopers spokesperson said in an emailed statement to BizWest. A UFCW representative didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Wednesday morning.

Contract negotiations between the grocery chain and the union, members of which are seeking wage increases, seem to have a habit of occurring against a background of broader tumult for King Soopers. 

The 2022 strike came as the COVID-19 pandemic was shining a spotlight on the critical role essential workers such as grocery-store employees play in everyday life, and just months after a gunman killed 10 people, including King Soopers employees, in the King Soopers store in Boulder’s Table Mesa shopping center.

That labor dispute was an ugly one, with both sides suing the other and King Soopers successfully petitioning a judge for a temporary restraining order against picketers, who were accused of aggressive tactics. 

King Soopers brought in non-union workers to staff stores during the strike, some of whom were paid more than what was being demanded by the union. Private security was also used by the Kroger Co. chain during union rallies and picketing events.

Management also blamed strikers for its decision to delay the reopening of the Table Mesa store in Boulder, closed for nearly a year after the March 2021 shooting. The union had cited this violent tragedy, which occurred during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, as an example of management’s failure to properly account for employee health and safety. 

The current contract negotiations are occurring just after a planned merger between King Soopers parent company Kroger and Albertsons Cos. (NYSE: ACI), which was opposed by regulators and the union, exploded last month in a flurry of lawsuits.

After a pair of judges issued injunctions in mid-December blocking a merger between the companies, Albertsons threw in the towel, calling off the $24.6 billion deal and suing Kroger for failing to secure regulatory approval for the business combination. 

Kroger failed “to exercise ‘best efforts’ and to take ‘any and all actions’ to secure regulatory approval of the companies’ agreed merger transaction, as was required of Kroger under the terms of the merger agreement between the parties,” Albertsons said last month.

Cincinnati, Ohio-based Kroger breached its merger contract with Albertsons, which owns and operates Safeway grocery stores in Colorado, “by repeatedly refusing to divest assets necessary for antitrust approval, ignoring regulators’ feedback, rejecting stronger divestiture buyers and failing to cooperate with Albertsons,” Boise, Idaho-based Albertsons said. 

Albertsons said it plans to ask the court to enforce a $600 million contract termination fee, and is “seeking billions of dollars in damages from Kroger to make Albertsons and its shareholders whole.”

Negotiators with King Soopers and United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 are meeting Wednesday and Thursday in Westminster in an effort to hammer out the details of a new labor contract.

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A Maryland native, Lucas has worked at news agencies from Wyoming to South Carolina before putting roots down in Colorado.
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