The Joint Council of Teamsters No. 28, which represents more than 50,000 members across Washington, Alaska and Northern Idaho, says it will honor a grocery worker strike if one occurs. The strike could potentially affect the 2,600 members of Teamsters Local 38 in Everett, Wash., and the nearly 27,000 members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) 21 and 367.
Negotiations among Teamsters Local 38, UFCW and the four major grocery chains—Safeway, QFC, Fred Meyer and Albertsons—have been ongoing for more than six months. One of the sticking points is healthcare coverage.
“We are communicating with our members about the issues our brothers and sisters in the grocery retail industry are facing in negotiations. The Teamsters will always stand up for working people, and the fact that these four grocery chains with a combined revenue that is in the tens of billions of dollars annually want to force their employees onto taxpayer subsidized healthcare is absurd and will not be tolerated,” said Rick Hicks, president of Joint Council Teamsters 28.
The Joint Council will communicate with its thousands of members who work in the sanitation, recycling, composting, soft drink, beer, wine, liquor, dairy, organic food, poultry, bread and produce industries who may be dispatched by their employer to one of these grocery chains. Joint Council 28 will work with all of its affected Teamster Locals to inform the members of their right to honor pickets and not make deliveries or pickups. Additionally, it says it will communicate with the members it has working at grocery distribution centers, who also have the right to honor picket lines. Any picket line presence at these distribution centers may affect grocery distribution statewide.