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Health costs key as talks begin with local grocers

By Jake Batsell
Seattle Times business reporter

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The Puget Sound region's four largest supermarket chains and union officials begin talks today for a new labor contract, the first of five bargaining sessions scheduled in the next two weeks.

The grocers hope to avoid a repeat of the recent Southern California strike, which lasted 18 weeks, but union officials have vowed to do whatever they can to protect workers' health-care benefits. Grocers now pay the full cost for workers' coverage.

"They (health benefits) are the main topic of conversation," said Sharon McCann, president of United Food and Commercial Workers local 1105 in Seattle, one of five locals representing some 25,000 grocery workers in Western Washington.

The California dispute lasted from mid-October to late February, costing the chains hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, and stretching many picketing workers beyond their financial limits.

Albertsons, Safeway and Kroger-owned chains QFC and Fred Meyer say they're optimistic that such acrimony can be avoided here. The companies have reached deals in recent weeks with workers in other parts of the country. The current contract expires May 2.

Other grocers will negotiate separately with their unions. For example, contracts for workers at Haggen and Top Food and Drug stores also expire May 2, but no talks have been scheduled. Both sides are waiting for cues from the larger chains' talks.

Workers' health-care costs have shot up more than 73 percent since the last contract was negotiated in 2001, grocers' figures show. The companies are expected to ask workers to begin sharing some of those expenses.

After today's initial session, talks are scheduled to resume Monday with specific contract proposals and will continue intermittently through April 30.

By the end of the month, negotiations could take one of several directions:

• The current contract could be extended while the talks continue (Kroger's Houston-area workers took this route earlier this month);
 
• A new contract could be ratified (Safeway workers in the Washington, D.C., area approved a new deal last month);

• A proposed contract could be rejected, setting the stage for a strike or lockout like the one in California; or

• Negotiations could continue without an extension.

In a letter sent last week to Western Washington business and political leaders, executives from the four chains said they had settled similar contracts with the UFCW in the past two years in Oregon and Eastern Washington.

"We recognize that it will take hard work at the negotiating table, but we remain optimistic that an agreement can be reached without a work stoppage," the companies wrote.

But UFCW officials have warned that they won't accept a carbon copy of the California settlement. That deal set up a two-tier system in which new employees receive considerably lower wages and health benefits than veterans.

Soon after the California deal was announced, local unions said it went too far and that unions here "are prepared to do whatever it takes, for as long as it takes, to protect affordable health care."

Jake Batsell: 206-464-2718 or jbatsell@seattletimes.com

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