Four days after their contract expired, the union representing thousands of King Soopers employees in Colorado on Monday scheduled the first vote to ask members to authorize a strike Jan. 29 in Westminster.
A second vote is set for Jan. 30 in Greenwood Village. More are expected. United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 7 said they’re starting in the Denver area because of the larger union presence and because that’s where contracts first expired Jan. 5. Negotiations were extended until Jan. 16 but King Soopers’ last offer was rejected Friday.
“They’re proposing wage increases that are not across the board. Not only are they inadequate, but they’re different based on the ZIP code,” said Kim Cordova, Local 7’s president. “The company is charging the same price to a customer but the workers are going to be paid less. That’s unacceptable to us.”
The company’s proposed wages — increasing up to $4.50 an hour over a four-year contract — would apply “to a very few select people,” Cordova said. Others would see much less, she said. Plus, she’s concerned about health benefits, inadequate staffing, competition from third-party vendors and worker safety.
King Soopers management had offered their “last, best and final” offer Thursday, adding 25 cents to boost pay raises for retail clerks by $1.50 an hour, among other changes. The grocer’s proposal expires Jan. 31.
“We believe this is an excellent offer and that our associates should be given the opportunity to vote for it. It reflects substantially improved wages for our associates,” the company said in a statement.
After this story first published, UFCW Local 7 set more dates for a member vote on authorizing a strike, including Jan. 31 in Colorado Springs and Feb. 1 in Pueblo.
The possibility of another grocery worker strike comes almost three years to the day after King Soopers employees ended their 10-day strike Jan. 21, 2022, when the union reached a new three-year contract with the grocer. That contract included a “no-strike clause,” which is no longer in effect since the contract expired, union officials said. And as of Monday evening, no new negotiating sessions have been scheduled.
Back on Jan. 12, 2022, more than 8,000 workers walked out at 77 King Soopers stores in the Denver area for a nine-day strike.
This time around, since the strike vote over unfair labor practices is coming later in the month, more contracts have expired, including in Colorado Springs and Pueblo. Cordova estimates there are 10,000 union members who are working under an expired contract. City Market contracts in Grand Junction expire Jan. 25, while a number of other King Soopers stores in Fort Collins, Greeley, Longmont and Loveland expire Feb. 15.
Local 7 began negotiating a new contract in October as King Soopers’ parent Kroger Inc. was fighting three lawsuits opposing its $24.6 billion merger with Safeway’s parent Albertsons.
Regulators said the supermarket megamerger was anticompetitive, and a judge in the Federal Trade Commission case temporarily halted the merger in December. A day later, Albertsons called off the merger and sued Kroger for failing to do what was needed to appease regulators.
The Colorado Attorney General’s antitrust case against the merger, which included evidence that King Soopers allegedly colluded with Safeway management to not hire striking workers, is still pending a decision by a Denver district court judge.
The union opposed the merger, and it became a distraction that really hurt workers and new contract negotiations, Cordova said.
And Kroger is not happy with Local 7, because “we were out front and met with regulators, not just here but the FTC,” Cordova said. “We believe the merger has totally impacted everything. We’ve seen a huge decline in staffing and hours in the stores, and workers and consumers have been paying for this. … We’re going to continue to suffer as a result of this failure, this food fight, this debacle of a merger between them and Albertsons.”
Kroger owns 118 King Soopers and 32 City Market stores in Colorado. Not all are unionized.
This story was updated on Jan. 22, 2025 at 9:09 a.m. with additional dates for union membership to vote on whether to strike.