UFCW 555 reaches agreement with Kroger

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United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555 reached agreement on a new set of three-year contracts covering around 4,500 Portland-area Fred Meyer grocery and meat department workers. The terms will apply throughout Oregon and Southwest Washington at Fred Meyer and QFC stores, which are owned by Kroger. The settlement comes two months after the previous contracts expired, and six weeks after a six-day strike. 

The new collective bargaining agreements raise pay for the most senior employees 50 cents more an hour than Fred Meyer was offering before the strike.

In an Oct. 17 joint press release, Fred Meyer and Local 555 said the new agreements deliver “significant wage increases” and give the company “the operational flexibility needed to meet customer demands.” Members ratified the agreements Oct. 23-25.

Raises at top of the scale

The agreements raise wages $4.50 an hour over three years for workers who are at the top of the pay scale — journey-level grocery workers and journey-level meat cutters. After an immediate increase of $2.50, pay will rise by $1 an hour Aug. 17, 2025, and Aug. 17, 2026. It takes 7,800 hours — between three and four years of full-time work — for an apprentice grocery or meat worker to reach the top of the pay scale.

In line with what Fred Meyer was offering before the strike, the agreements also raise the starting wage for apprentice grocery clerks and meat cutters to $17.00 an hour — up from the current $16.20. The starting wage stays at $17 through the end of the three-year agreements. There’s a chance the Portland-area minimum wage — currently $15.95 — could pass $17 by then, in which case the agreements say the starting wage will be 25 cents above the minimum.

The grocery agreement doesn’t raise pay for courtesy clerks; they would stay at the current rate of $16.20 throughout the agreement, or 25 cents above the minimum. 

The agreements also say work schedules will be posted 17 days before the start of the workweek. And they commit Kroger to mandatory fact-finding within 45 days for disciplinary grievances; that appears to resolve the subject of a federal lawsuit the union filed Aug. 1.

For its part, Local 555 agreed to withdraw nine pending unfair practice charges and 31 pending grievances. 

The union also made a concession: Kroger will be allowed to bring in outside workers to cut produce, and to package, label, and stock the cut produce.

Before the strike, Fred Meyer had offered to increase hourly pay for the most senior workers by $3.50 over three years, or $4 if the union agreed to outsource cut produce. Local 555 was calling for raises of $7.30 over three years — to bring workers into line with what Fred Meyer workers are paid in Tacoma.

The tentative agreement says the Portland-area Fred Meyer contracts will set the standard for all of Oregon and Southwest Washington. That means the terms will apply to non-food Fred Meyer workers in the Portland area when their current contract expires July 5, 2025, and to grocery, meat, and non-food workers in all other Oregon and Southwest Washington Kroger stores — both at Fred Meyer and at Kroger’s QFC banner. About 140 newly unionized workers at non-food units in Springfield and Grants Pass will be added to the master agreements in those areas. The new terms will ultimately apply to more than 11,000 workers, the union said.

The new Portland-area grocery and meat agreements expire Aug. 14, 2027, while the next non-food agreement will expire July 8, 2028. (Because their contract was still in force, non-food workers at Fred Meyer continued working during the grocery and meat strike in August.)

Local 555 announced on the day the strike ended that it was calling on consumers to boycott Fred Meyer “until a fair agreement is reached and Fred Meyer’s admitted price gouging has stopped.” As part of the settlement, Local 555 agreed to encourage the public to shop at Fred Meyer, ending its boycott. 

“We’re now encouraging the community to go back and support union workers by shopping at Fred Meyer and other union retailers,” Local 555 spokesperson Miles Eshaia told the Labor Press.

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