Food Fight

The local chapter of the United Food and Commercial Workers union would like you to leave a few things off your shopping list: Albertsons, Safeway and Fred Meyer.

“Help Albertsons workers get a fair contract,” one billboard blares. “Please shop Rosauers.”

Since September, the UFCW has spent around $100,000 to plaster the city with yard signs, billboards, bus ads, radio ads and television ads proclaiming a similar message: Shop Rosauers, not Albertsons, Safeway or Fred Meyer.

It’s a calculated union tactic in the long-running contract-negotiation — dragging on since November of 2007 — between the UFCW and the four grocery stores.

All that time, Larry Hall, president of UCFW local 1439, says the union has been fighting: for higher employee wages (a raise of about $2 spread over five years); for more hours — 40 hours a week instead of 30 — for grocery employees; for salary increases that workers receive the longer they work; and for assurances that employees won’t be fired after making a single cash-handling mistake, as Hall says has happened several times at Fred Meyer.

As of press time, only Rosauers had negotiated a new contract. And Albertsons, Fred Meyer and Safeway, unsurprisingly, aren’t pleased by the union campaign.

“They’re running this campaign to try to bully us into taking the Rosauers contract,” Fred Meyer spokeswoman Melinda Merrill says.

To Merrill, it’s a twisted irony: Albertsons, Safeway and Fred Meyer employees are forced to pay union dues — between $24 and $50 a month — so the union can tell customers not to shop at their stores.

“The union is out of line to try to hurt our business,” Merrill says. “We cannot see a single benefit to encouraging harm to our union members.”

Indeed, Hall also believes that the advertisements have hurt business at Albertsons and Fred Meyer. He’s counting on it. “Have some … hours been cut because of this?” Hall says. “I expect they have.”

Hall says the union encouraged members to apply for unemployment, just in case. But it’s a relatively tame form of protest, he says. The union has much more destructive ordnance in their arsenal.

“Would they rather have a strike?” Hall says. “We decided to try another form of campaign and keep our union members working.”

Merrill says she isn’t aware of an official response or rebuttal from the grocery stores. “We’re not running a political campaign here,” Merrill says. “We want our employees to have a new contract and be able to move on.”

Instead, Merrill encourages curious Spokanites to go directly to their Fred Meyer workers. “Talk to our employees,” Merrill says. “We have one of the lowest turnover rates in the retail industry. We pay well.”

Albertsons has responded, Hall says, by filing an official grievance against the union over its campaign. The contract between the grocery stores and the union reads “… the Union agrees not to engage in any strike or stoppage of work.”

Albertsons, Hall says, sees the negative advertisements as creating “stoppage of work.” Albertsons did not reply to Inlander questions by press time.

UNWELCOME PRAISE

Another grocery store is frustrated with the union telling Spokane to shop only at Rosauers, and that’s Rosauers.

“We shouldn’t be being leveraged against our competitors,” CEO Jeff Phillips says. “We don’t believe the union has the right to tell you [where] to shop. We believe in earning your business based on the quality of selection and the overall value we deliver.”

Worse, customers have called, wondering what was going on with Rosauers’ new ad campaign. Each time, Phillips had to explain: Rosauers has nothing to do with those Shop-Rosauers-Not-Albertsons ads.

“When those advertisements first broke, we called the union to tell them that their ad campaign was very, very confusing,” Phillips says. Phillips asked the union to clarify that the advertisements did not come from Rosauers. Eventually, the union did, but in the meantime, Rosauers ran advertisements of their own to clarify the issue.

Most people, Phillips says, already knew the advertisements weren’t from Rosauers. Negative ads just aren’t in the Rosauers ethic. “There’s plenty of room in the marketplace for everybody to co-exist,” Phillips says. “We respect our competitors”

WHY ROSAUERS CAN

Still, the union argument hinges on Rosauers, which agreed to give workers a $1.85 an hour raise over five years, as the ads say. So why can’t Albertsons? Rosauers gives its employees around 40 hours a week, so why can’t Safeway? Rosauers promised not to fire employees after a single mistake, so why can’t Fred Meyer?

But in a world of Wal-Marts and Wincos, Merrill explains, low, low prices come with razor-thin profit margins. “It’s a volume business, not a margin business,” Merrill says. What the union’s asking for just isn’t possible, she says.

So for Rosauers competitors, there’s the reverse question. How can Rosauers?

Merrill is stumped. “I don’t know how Rosauers is making it work,” she says. “We can’t figure out how they did it.”

Rosauers doesn’t sell nearly the volume that the larger stores do. Rosauers is relatively local. Their headquarters are on Garland Avenue. They only have about 20 grocery stores.

But Phillips says Rosauers’ prices remain very competitive, thanks mainly to their large wholesaler, URM. And there are a lot of other costs — big corporate expenses — that sprawling operations like Albertsons have to deal with, but Rosauers can skimp by without.

For example, while larger grocery chains may have a half-dozen different public relations specialists — one for each region — the public relations at Rosauers are handled by the CEO himself.

That small size, Phillips says, gives Rosauers the dexterity to do things like save employee jobs after the Five Mile Rosauers’ roof collapsed this winter. (The Five Mile store will have its grand reopening on April 29.)

Beyond that, Phillips says, it’s a matter of philosophy. Rosauers is willing to pay for full-time employees because the more often they’re in the store, the better they can connect with regular customers.

Just because Rosauers has come to a certain agreement doesn’t mean it’s set in stone. One stipulation of the collective bargaining contract: If Safeway, Fred Meyer or Albertsons negotiates a deal more advantageous to Rosauers, Rosauers can take the better deal.

“If we come to an agreement on the wage contract, [Rosauers] can change their wage contract,” Merrill says. “In most cases, that’s what happens.”

The union is oh-so-close to coming to an agreement with the grocery stores, Hall says, especially with Albertsons. It’s a delicate time. He doesn’t want anything — including this Inlander article — to screw it up.

And if no agreement is acceptable?

Then, Hall says, it may be time to pick up the picket sign.