Three years after thousands of King Soopers workers in Colorado walked off the job to fight what their union called unfair labor practices, employees could be on the cusp of doing it again if workers vote to authorize a strike this weekend.
Voting started this week in Denver and is scheduled to run through Feb. 1, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 7 said after King Soopers and the union failed to reach an agreement on a new contract. The existing contract, ratified after the 2022 strike, expired Jan. 17.
The union rejected what King Soopers called its “last, best and final offer” to workers. Some of the key sticking points are addressing staffing shortages, outsourcing union jobs to gig workers, health care reserves, and eliminating seniority-based scheduling protections.
King Soopers maintains its offer is fair, pointing to increases of $4.50 per hour for top-rate associates, department heads and pharmacy techs; continued pension investment; and adding new roles like sanitation clerks and hourly managers to at least 20 stores over the next four years.
The union and King Soopers management are pointing fingers at one another over the impasse, accusing the other side of not bargaining in good faith.
A lack of trust makes these kinds of negotiations difficult, according to Doug Allen, an associate professor at DU’s Daniels College of Business.
“Unfortunately, when trust is lacking, oftentimes a truthful statement from the company, [such as] ‘this is all we can afford to do’ is not something that’s believed by the employees or the union. That makes negotiations very, very difficult,” Allen said. “And making extreme statements like ‘this is our last, best and final offer’ does not really help with that trust because there will always be another last, best and final offer.”
