UFCW 555 on strike at Fred Meyer (and now opposes the merger) 

Roughly 4,500 grocery and meat workers at Portland-area Fred Meyer stores went on strike Aug. 28, and are expected to stay out through Labor Day weekend.

The strike was called to protest violations of federal labor law known as “unfair labor practices,” United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 555 said in a Aug. 27 press statement announcing the strike. In an unfair labor practice charge it filed July 10 with the National Labor Relations Board, Local 555 said Fred Meyer has refused to provide information the union requested that’s relevant to negotiations, as it’s required to do under federal labor law. Local 555 asked for detailed data on what Fred Meyer is actually paying members, Local 555 president Dan Clay said at an Aug. 28 press conference, but the company has not cooperated.

It’s common for unions to strike in protest of unfair labor practices rather than for economic grievances because under a 1938 Supreme Court decision, employers can “permanently replace” strikers in an economic strike, but are barred from doing so if the strike is called to protest unfair labor practices.

The strike covers grocery and meat workers in the Portland area whose collective bargaining agreements expired Aug. 10. A separate Portland-area contract covering Fred Meyer non-food workers in retail remains in effect until July 5, 2025, so workers in those departments continued to work during the strike.

The two sides started bargaining the last week of July over new contracts for grocery and meat workers in Portland and Bend, but they’re far apart on wages.

At its web site fredmeyercba.com, Fred Meyer provided details of what it called its best offer to settle a contract, an offer that it said would be taken off the table in the event of a strike. Fred Meyer proposed a three-year agreement with journeyman raises totaling $3.50, starting with an immediate $1.50 and followed by $1 raises in the second and third years. The first raise would go up to $2 if the union agreed to allow Fred Meyer to outsource cut produce, with outside contractors doing the work in the store instead of bargaining unit members. Fred Meyer also proposed to raise the starting wage to $17 an hour, up from $15.70. (The legal minimum wage for the Portland area is currently $15.45.) And Fred Meyer also offered ratification bonuses of $1,000 to $4,000 depending on experience.

But Local 555 is calling for far more — hourly raises totaling $7.30 over three years, starting with an immediate raise of $4.30 an hour for Portland-area workers. That figure is meant to bring Portland-area workers up to the wages that Fred Meyer pays in Tacoma, Washington. The union proposes that be followed by raises of $2 and $1 in the second and third years of the agreement. Local 555 is also proposing an additional $1.50 an hour for workers with over 10 years at the company.

Fred Meyer rejected the union’s offer.

“We were told that increasing wages to what the West Coast standard is would cause store closures in Portland,” Clay said.

Local 555 back to opposing the merger with Albertsons

The strike began on the same day Clay was scheduled to testify in a federal trial. The Federal Trade Commission — which is in charge of enforcing laws that are supposed to prevent companies from becoming monopolies — is suing in U.S. District Court to block Kroger’s proposed purchase of Albertsons for $24.6 billion. Kroger is the nation’s largest grocery company, and Albertsons is the second largest. In the Pacific Northwest, Kroger holdings include Fred Meyer and QFC, while Albertsons owns Safeway, Albertsons, and Haggen stores. 

Unions opposing the merger, and the FTC itself, argued that the merger would result in lower wages for grocery workers and higher prices for shoppers. Hoping to squeeze past anti-monopoly rules, Kroger and Albertsons told the FTC they would sell hundreds of stores to C&S, an East Coast grocery wholesaler that has little experience operating retail grocery stores.

In its Aug. 17 announcement warning that Portland grocery and meat workers had voted to authorize a strike, Local 555 also announced that it’s no longer in support of the Kroger-Albertsons merger.

No other UFCW local, or any other union, had endorsed the merger of the two largest U.S. grocery companies, and the UFCW international union resolved to oppose the merger at its 2023 convention. The Oregon AFL-CIO had even passed a 2023 resolution opposing the merger at Local 555’s request. But on Feb. 19, 2024, Local 555 announced that it changed its position and now would support the merger. The Aug. 17 announcement returns Local 555 to its former position opposing the merger.

On the witness stand and in a press conference afterward, Clay offered an explanation of the back-and-forth. Clay said back in January, he and his assistant Esai Aldai met with executives of C&S and were persuaded that the company would respect existing union contracts, that it intended to stay in the grocery business, and that if Albertsons’ hedge fund owners didn’t sell the company to Kroger, they would sell it to a more anti-union company like Walmart or Amazon.

But Clay said new information led the union to reverse itself again.

When Kroger first announced its merger plans, it made a non-binding pledge to invest $1 billion to raise employee wages and benefits. But there was no sign of that generosity in the negotiations with Local 555, union spokesperson Miles Eshaia told the Labor Press. 

Clay said Fred Meyer bargainers told the union that the billion dollars in raises could only come after the merger.

“For Fred Meyer to say they have delivered on their promise to accelerate associate wages is misleading at best,” Eshaia said in the Aug. 17 press statement.

Kroger made $1.2 billion in profit last year, and paid its CEO Rodney McMullen $15.7 million. But starting pay under Fred Meyer’s contract with Local 555 is 25 cents above minimum wage for Portland-area grocery workers, and top pay is $21.85 an hour. Top pay for meat cutters is $24.29 an hour.

Clay said he also learned that in Alaska, Kroger intended to keep only non-union stores, and sell its union stores to C&S. Clay said the pension for those union workers is underfunded, and the burden of higher wages and pension contributions would leave C&S unable to compete with Kroger, leading to store closures and the loss of union jobs as the likely outcome.

Fred Meyer issued its own press statement on Aug. 15, saying it has increased average hourly pay of its Oregon workers by nearly $4 an hour since 2021. Eshaia pointed out the key ingredient: The company raised pay because it had to — under its union contract.

The current three-year contract was settled after a one-day strike on Dec. 17, 2021.

Local 555 also says Fred Meyer is failing to live up to the terms of that contract, because it’s refusing to respond to union grievances. In a lawsuit filed Aug. 1 in U.S. District Court, Local 555 says Fred Meyer declined to schedule the fact-finding meetings that are required as a step of the grievance process — for 258 pending grievances. The union is asking the court to order Fred Meyer to hold the meetings, and pay attorneys costs. 

[This story has been updated from the version that appeared in our Aug. 30 print edition.]