August 10 - Supermarket Corporations’ contract offer changes little.

Don't be fooled! New Health and Welfare offer is NOT what management claims! Offer doesn't adequately fund your benefits & would continue deficit spending. Supermarket Corporations’ contract offer changes little. If this is what compromise looks like to them, what’s their idea of capitulation? Today management offered to grocery workers a warmed-over version of their punitive health care plan and called it “compromise”.

The only thing this proposal compromises is the viability of grocery workers’ health care and jobs:

• It still could cost as much as 50%, or nearly 50%, of grocery workers’ pay.
• It still puts the health plan in danger of bankruptcy, which could result in total loss or severe cuts in current health care benefits and access.
• It still insists on unfair concessions by workers making an average of $20,000 a year just to marginally increase corporate profits of $3 billion and more.
• The only thing it really changes is the maximum out of pocket expenditures, which management had proposed raising by more than 30%.

And that’s just the health care plan.

“There still is no wage proposal. There still is no comprehensive contract offer. The corporations that own Ralphs, VONS, and Albertsons are playing around the edges of their punitive plan to nickel and dime working families,” said Rick Icaza, president of the Grocery Workers union Local 770.

“These corporations made more than $3 billion in profits last year alone, and paid out $500 million to Wall Street and investors. But they want their workers to cut their pay by as much as 50%. That’s wrong. Its time to send these corporations a message: people who work hard deserve a fair wage and benefits, and should be able to take care of their families.”

“We urge the corporations that own Ralphs, VONS, and Albertsons to stop negotiating in the media and get serious at the bargaining table,” he concluded. Over 200 community groups and organizations stand with grocery workers, pledging to confront store managers and demand their companies negotiate quickly and fairly with grocery workers.

Today, delegations of consumers, community groups, clergy, and workers will storm stores across Los Angeles County to demand management conclude these negotiations quickly and fairly.