Non-food employees at Eugene Fred Meyer go union


EUGENE - Non-food employees at the Fred Meyer store on West 11th Avenue here have voted to join United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555. It is the first Freddy's non-food department in Lane County to organize.

Actually, most non-food departments at Fred Meyer stores outside of Portland operate non-union, said John Etten, assistant to the president of Local 555.

The vote held Oct. 23 was 61 to 34 by employees in apparel, pharmacy, nutrition and other non-food departments. Nearly 95 percent of eligible employees voted in the National Labor Relations Board election.

On Saturday, Oct. 17, Local 555 held a "shop-in" that drew more than 100 supporters, Etten said. "The support, especially from the Teamsters, really helped spark the election turnout."

Etten said management held three captive audience meetings prior to the union election.

Food checkers and meat cutters at the West 11th store are also members of Local 555 who work under separate agreements. Those two bargaining units recently ratified new four-year agreements patterned after ones settled last summer at Albertson's.

The non-food employees initiated the organizing drive last April after expressing concerns about working conditions, wages and benefits. "Without organizing you have no hope of having any of that," Barb Roche, a 14-year Fred Meyer employee and union supporter, told the Eugene Register-Guard.

Shonna Butler, a special projects union representative (called a SPUR), was a catalyst in the organizing drive victory.

Talks for a first-ever contract have not been set. Meantime, grocery and meat contracts in Salem, Albany and along the coast are open.

Fred Meyer stores recently were purchased by Kroger Inc., a Cincinnati-based regional grocery chain with stores throughout the East and Midwest.

Gene Pronovost, president of Local 555, said Kroger stores operate union and the Fred Meyer acquisition will make it "a truly national chain" that can compete head-on with the anti-union Wal-Mart and its grocery subsidiary Sam's Club.

Pronovost said Wal-Mart has recently opened three conventional grocery stores in Arkansas and many Wal-Mart stores throughout the country have pads and/or land next to them that likely will be developed into grocery stores.

"Wal-Mart is the competition, and this (the Kroger buyout of Fred Meyer) is how all the big chains plan to survive," Pronovost said.

-END-

November 6, 1998 issue

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