Unions: Will Grocery Pact Have Coattails?

By JANICE PODSADA
Courant Staff Writer

March 28 2007

Anthony Ciliento, an organizer with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, is helping a group of disgruntled non-union grocery workers organize their workplace.

"They're tired of paying ridiculously high prices for health insurance - if they can get it," Ciliento said. "Some people - both full- and part-time workers - are paying up to $100 every two weeks for their health insurance. Part-timers end up working pretty much to pay for their insurance."

The terms of the widely publicized Stop & Shop contract caught their eye, he said. Citing denial of timely pay raises and reasonable health care benefits, they contacted Ciliento, an organizer with Local 371, based in Westport.

"I can't say which company, but we are in the process of signing up workers at a non-union retailer in Connecticut," said Brian Petronella, president of UFCW Local 371.

The Stop & Shop contract deal, reached this month, was closely watched because, with 43,000 workers in New England, it is the nation's second largest grocery workers' contract. The deal obtained favorable health care benefits for part-time workers - significant since the retail sector is dominated by low-paid, part-time employees.

The question now is whether this deal will have a ripple effect, either in boosting the UFCW's ability to organize, or in pressuring large, non-unionized retail chains - such as Target and Wal-Mart - to further improve their health packages in order to compete for workers.

The answer, looking ahead, is tied to the overall bargaining power of low-wage workers, who have not generally fared well in recent years.

This Stop & Shop contract appears to have satisfied the first hurdle toward having a ripple effect: It was clearly a win for part-time workers, said Jonathan Cutler, labor expert and professor of sociology at Wesleyan University.

"They won movement in the right direction," Cutler said. "It does raise the stakes for other retailers in terms of restoring employer-based health insurance as part of labor relations.

"In a time when there's a question as to whether health benefits will survive, this is a good sign," Cutler added.

But while health coverage is a major issue, the UFCW here and in other parts of the country has been unable to substantially raise the starting pay of entry-level retail workers much above minimum wage, unless a 35-cent annual hourly raise counts as a victory.

In Connecticut, new part-time union and non-union grocery workers typically receive similar starting wages, around $7.60 an hour, the state's minimum wage.

One sticky matter makes it hard for large groups of workers to organize or apply pressure on companies. Quite simply, many of the part-time workers are only looking for extra money, perhaps for a short time before they move on to another job.

So, although the new Stop & Shop contract provides new part-time hires with 100 percent paid health care premiums after one year's employment, that isn't necessarily enough of a draw for part-time workers to jump ship and apply for jobs there.

"I like it here. I'm not into that union thing," said a 17-year-old part-time worker at a Price Chopper supermarket in Newington. He asked that his name not be disclosed. "I have the opportunity to get health care, but I'm covered under my parents' plan," he said, as he rounded up stray shopping carts in the store's parking lot.

And according to union officials, his youth is typical of many part-time grocery workers.

About half of the part-time employees at Stop & Shop, for example, are high school or college-age workers, many of whom are covered by their parents' health care plan or another employer.

"I get about 20 hours a week. I've been here about two years," said a part-time Stop & Shop employee at the Hartford store, who has worked for the supermarket for 24 years and asked not to be identified. "I'm eligible for health care, but I don't need it. I work another job and I get it through there."

At the Wal-Mart store in Newington, a 30-year-old woman who wanted to make some "extra money" was hunched over a computer terminal filling out an online job application. When asked why she wanted to apply at Wal-Mart when she could apply at Stop & Shop and be eligible for health care benefits after a year, she replied, "I work Monday through Friday as an accounting clerk. I have health care. I'm just looking for a Saturday job."

For now, attention has turned to the West Coast, where negotiations involving the largest retail contract, which covers 70,000 grocery workers in Southern California, are currently underway.

Three years ago, unionized grocery workers in Southern California suffered an enormous setback. In 2004, UFCW launched an unsuccessful strike against three major grocery retailers.

Locked out, weary and broke from walking the picket line - the weekly strike allowance fell from $240 a week to $100 a week - striking UFCW members voted to end the strike and accept a dismal contract that instituted an unequal two-tier system of wages and benefits, said Mike Shimpock, a spokesman for seven union locals in southern California.

Under the terms of the contract, new part-time employees are not eligible for health care unless they've worked at least 32 hours a week for 18 months, Shimpock said.

"To add a dependent to the policy, you have to work another 12 months. It takes almost three years - 30 months- to get your wife and children covered," he said.

By comparison, the terms of the new Stop & Shop agreement seem princely, offering health care benefits to part-time employees who work 15 to 32 hours a week, after one instead of two years.

The Stop & Shop contract has boosted hopes among the unions that they can eliminate the two-tier system of benefits.

"The Stop & Shop settlement certainly has shown what standing up to an employer will do," Shimpock said. "It has emboldened our membership, the effect it's had on morale is palpable."

While the union locals in southern California have high hopes of regaining the health care benefits lost three years ago, no one believes the UFCW will be able to substantially raise the entry-level pay of retail grocery workers, which is currently $7.55 an hour - five cents more than California's minimum wage. That is partly why benefits such as health coverage have become all the more crucial.

The struggle for health care coverage is one of the most important issues in union negotiations.

Traditionally, unions have provided their members with a living wage.

But if a union shop can't promise higher wages than it's non-union counterpart, why choose a union shop, especially if a potential employee doesn't need health care coverage. Furthermore, what advantage is there for a low-wage worker to try and organize a non-union employer.

Even some union officials acknowledge there's little motivation for a low-wage worker to attempt to organize a non-union employer.

Often it's easier for low-wage workers "to quit their job and get hired at the union shop than it is to fight a non-union employer," said Jeff Bollen, secretary-treasurer of UFCW 1445, based in Dedham, Mass. Local 1445 was one of the five New England locals participating in negotiations with Stop & Shop.

"You hope you start getting calls after a good contract, but that hasn't happened here," Bollen said.