King Soopers strike begins in Boulder Valley, metro Denver

DENVER — Unionized King Soopers workers at 77 of the Kroger Co.-owned (NYSE: KR) grocery-store chain’s locations in metro Denver and Boulder and Broomfield counties began a two-week strike Thursday morning.

Workers and labor leaders — who have accused King Soopers management of unfair labor practices during a recent (and so far unsuccessful) attempt by the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 union and the grocery chain to negotiate a new labor contract — rallied Thursday afternoon in the parking lot of a Denver Safeway store directly across the street from a King Soopers location.

“We were hoping in the last week that maybe the employer would see the light and change their illegal behaviors,” said Raina Carpenter, a King Soopers employee and union bargaining committee member from Pueblo. “…I’m positive these strikes will get the company’s attention.”

A dozen or so union members marched in a picket line across the street from the rally while a security guard and truck stood between them and the King Soopers parking lot.

The National Labor Relations Board defines two categories of lawful strike activities: unfair-labor-practices strikes and economic strikes. The current King Soopers work stoppage is an unfair-labor-practices strike. “Such strikers can be neither discharged nor permanently replaced,” according to the NLRB. “When the strike ends, unfair labor practice strikers, absent serious misconduct on their part, are entitled to have their jobs back even if employees hired to do their work have to be discharged.”

Among the unfair-labor-practice allegations made by the union are claims that King Soopers management has interrogated and surveilled union members engaged in organizing activities, refusing to provide union negotiators with pertinent information, threatening to discipline members for wearing clothing and pins with union messaging and using millions of dollars from retirement funds to pay workers who aren’t participating in the strike.

“The workers feel like Kroger values their employees like they value their equipment — just use it until it breaks,” UFCW Local 7 President Kim Cordova said. “Workers are broken. and that’s why we’re on the picket line today.”

As part of a new labor contract, the union has demanded better pay, benefits and working conditions.

“We want to be clear: The union’s call for a strike is not about wages, health care, or pensions. It is based on allegations we believe lack merit and have yet to be validated by the NLRB or any court,” King Soopers president Joe Kelley said in a prepared statement. “We are deeply concerned for our associates, who are being misled into a work stoppage that doesn’t serve their best interests.”

King Soopers said last week that it “is confident that the union’s allegations of unfair labor practices are unfounded,” and that the company is “disappointed by the outcome of Local 7 obtaining strike authorization.”

The grocery chain claims that it has offered the union what it calls “its last, best and final offer.” King Soopers said the offer included “significant wage increases,” including a $4.50 hourly wage increase for top clerks; “affordable health care” and a “committed focus on effective staffing.”

Thursday’s strikers included workers in Boulder, Broomfield, Adams, Arapahoe, Denver, Douglas and Jefferson counties, but broader labor actions could be coming.

King Soopers union workers in Pueblo voted over the weekend to authorize a strike, and Cordova said Thursday that a work stoppage in that city will begin Friday morning.

The labor contract for UFCW members in Longmont, Loveland, Fort Collins and Greeley expires in about a week, and a deal for a new contract or extension has yet to be struck.

When asked by BizWest Thursday whether the union is preparing for the possibility of strikes in Northern Colorado King Soopers locations, Cordova said: “Yeah, we may do that as well.”

The current work stoppage will be the second in three years for Colorado’s unionized King Soopers workers, who went on strike in January 2022 when negotiations over the most-recent labor agreement broke down.

“When the labor movement strikes, we win,” Colorado AFL-CIO executive director Dennis Dougherty said during Thursday’s rally in Denver. 

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