After a vote of union grocery store workers wrapped up over the weekend, the UFCW Local 7 announced Monday that union members will strike.
According to the union, about 10,000 workers in 77 stores in Colorado will go on strike at 5 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 6. That includes King Soopers workers in Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas and Jefferson counties and at stores in Boulder and Louisville.
Grocery store workers in Colorado Springs and Pueblo voted to authorize the strike during the weekend. Both overwhelmingly approved the strike, but the union did not respond to questions about whether workers in those cities will also strike.
United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 7 calls it an Unfair Labor Practice strike and listed the charges on Monday:
- Illegally interrogating union members about our bargaining and surveilling members in discussions with union staff.
- Illegally refusing to provide information necessary for the union to be able to make or consider proposals in contract negotiations including sales data necessary for staffing proposals
- Illegally threatening members with discipline and sending home from work for simply exercising their union right to wear union clothing, buttons and other union gear that allow workers to stand in solidarity.
- Unlawfully insisting on gutting $8 million in retiree health benefit funds to pay for wage increases for active workers.
UCFW Local 7 set the voting to authorize the strike after King Soopers and the union failed to reach an agreement on a new contract. Negotiations started in October and lasted for months until bargaining stalled. 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.
