The Simple Truth
Your hard work during this monumental national and global crisis has been essential to Kroger and the communities you serve. And as your union, our number one priority is making sure you get a contract that reflects that. You have earned and deserve a contract that improves your wages, hours, and benefits. However, after reviewing Kroger’s latest proposal, we simply cannot find a single item that will actually improve your working conditions.
The truth is that Kroger’s proposal includes reductions to your hours, reductions to your guarantees, and the merging of contracts that will reduce benefits and worsen working conditions. But the biggest and most misleading proposal in Kroger’s plan, is their attempt to overhaul your health care. Here are the highlights on some of the other concessionary take-aways in Kroger’s contract “offer:”
- When your union asked Kroger why they took away $2 “hero pay” when covid-19 cases in stores have more than doubled, Kroger stated “hero pay” was sales driven and not due to the current pandemic. So, you were only considered a “hero” from 3/29/2020 to 5/16/2020.
- Merging clerks and meat CBAs by adding article 4 of the meat CBA to the clerk CBA, meaning meat dept. workers would have to adopt all clerk language that would not apply to their respective skill set.
- Reducing full time positions by up to 20% in tier 1 stores, reducing full time positions by 10 % in tier 2 stores, and 50% of full-time positions will only apply to tier 3 stores.
- Changing daily overtime and split shift language, so overtime will only apply after a 9-hour shift.
- Deleting Sunday and holiday rotation.
- Eliminating the 15 hour minimum with no weekly guarantee for hours.
- Still wanting to build non-union stores.
- Removing the Store Manager and District Manager from your grievance procedure.
- Reducing the full-time minimum hour qualifier to 36 hours.
- Limiting employees to a transfer qualifier when it comes to transferring to another Kroger store.
- Reducing vacation weeks to 3 weeks instead of 6 weeks.
Kroger continues to spend money on billboards and TV commercials to “thank associates,” but true appreciation comes in the form of a contract that honors your value, dedication, and hard work.
We will continue to meet with the Company and update you on the progress of negotiations. In the meantime, continue to engage your co-workers, friends, and family and let them know that the way for a multi-million-dollar corporation to honor the workers who made them successful is not by taking away their pay and cutting their health care.
