The potential grocery workers strike in Southern California has been averted. After eight months of negotiations over contracts, there has been a deal that the union and the store owners have agreed to. The workers have been offered access to affordable comprehensive health care.
Last week, the union that protects grocery store workers issued a 72 hour notice to cancel a contract extension. This meant that the workers could have gone on strike as early as last weekend. Fortunately, this didn’t end up happening.
The reason for the strike had to do with health insurance. The grocery store owners said that the health care fund that was being used to pay for the employer sponsored health insurance was about to run out of money. This meant that the stores wanted the grocery store workers to pay much more money for their health insurance policy. The workers union did not think that the workers should have to do that. The negotiation process has gone on for around eight months.
If the strike occurred, some grocery stores would have closed until the strike ended. Ralphs said it would close all 250 of its stores. Albertsons said it would close stores in 100 locations. Vons, on the other hand, would have remained open during a strike. The grocery store industry lost around $2 billion when the previous workers strike happened in 2004. Strikes tend to make potential customers choose to shop elsewhere, in order to avoid having to cross picket lines in order to buy groceries.
The potential strike has officially been averted. An agreement has been made between the three grocery store chains and the members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union (which includes more than 60,000 workers).
The union says: “This package protects our members’ access to affordable comprehensive health care for themselves and their families”. This was the union’s top priority through the entire negotiation process. Grocery store workers in Southern California now have a three-year contract that gives them the health insurance that they need. I haven’t seen anything online the describes the exact details of this contract, but it is clear that the workers won’t lose their health insurance.
The majority of Americans who can afford to have health insurance coverage are able to do so because it is something that they get through their employer. Clearly, employers that make changes that alter, (or remove), their employee’s access to health care is a very big deal. In this case, the potential of losing their health care almost caused thousands of workers to go on strike.
Image by Quinn Dombrowski on Flickr