Stop & Shop customers can rest assured that they will be able to continue shopping at their local grocery store without crossing a picket line.
Members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 328 - which represents 12,000 retail workers in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts - voted Sunday to ratify a three-year contract approved by union leaders and Stop & Shop executives Saturday.
The Local 328 is one of five UFCW unions - representing a total of 43,000 workers in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut - that voted in favor of seven new contracts for workers, said Stop & Shop spokeswoman Faith Weiner.
Union leaders and company executives had been negotiating a new contract for three months, said Jim Riley, secretary-treasurer of Local 328. After the old contract expired on Feb. 17, workers threatened to strike if a satisfactory contract could not reached by Feb. 18.
"The company realized the members were mad at them and they would walk if they didn't get a contract they would be happy with," Riley said. The contract specifically addresses union members' concerns about health care benefits and pension plans, Riley said.
The contract will allow Stop & Shop to "remain competitive," Weiner said. "Luckily we don't have to deal with the strike, and we're grateful," she said. "We're glad that the negotiations are behind us."
Weiner would not comment on how much a strike would have cost the company. But the company appeared to have been preparing for the worst - as of Monday night, the company's employment Web site displayed a "now hiring" notification that read, "In the event of a stoppage by our store associates, temporary replacement workers will be hired." Full-time cashier and clerk positions would pay $15 an hour, while part-time positions would pay $11 an hour, according to the Web site.
The contact dispute centered on healthcare costs. The company initially wanted employees to pay $50 a week to cover a spouse. Now, the spousal surcharge has been eliminated, and a worker must pay $10 a week for a couple coverage plan instead of $5 a week for a single-employee coverage plan, Riley said. "They will have a premium co-pay for the health insurance," Riley said. "But I would say they expected that to happen," he said, noting that workers were "pleased with the small number."
Part-time workers will not pay any healthcare premiums, Riley said. They must work two years before receiving health care benefits, as opposed to three years in the expired contract, he added.
The union also kept the current pension plan, which pays former employees on a monthly basis. The company intended to replace the plan with a 401(k) plan, which would require employees to invest part of their current paychecks for returns after retirement and would not pay employees on a monthly basis.
Full-time employees also received wage increases of $65 per week over three years, while part time employees received wage increases of $1.05 per week over that time period, Riley said.
