Kroger-owned King Soopers workers in the Denver metropolitan area, Boulder, Parker, and Broomfield bargaining units voted on Thursday night to authorize an unfair labor practice strike. The decision was announced yesterday by the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) Local 7, the largest private-sector union in Colorado that represents retail, grocery, food processing, healthcare, manufacturing, and cannabis workers in Colorado and Wyoming.
According to UFCW Local 7, 95 percent of workers in the Denver meat bargaining unit and 96 percent of workers in the Denver retail bargaining unit voted to strike. Voting will take place for workers in Colorado Springs and Pueblo on Friday and Saturday, which could authorize strikes in additional locations.
UFCW Local 7’s contract with King Soopers, which had a no-strike clause prohibition, expired on January 17.
Kim Cordova, the president of UFCW Local 7, said that there have been multiple unfair labor practice charges filed against King Soopers in the last several months, ranging from “illegal intimidation of workers by the employer, to the employer’s failure to provide needed information on staffing to allow for the union to prepare a comprehensive proposal to resolve the staffing crisis in King Soopers’ stores.”
In the press release published by UFCW Local 7 yesterday, Conor Hall, a deli clerk who has worked at King Soopers in Boulder for seven years, said that the union has been in negotiations with the grocery store chain since October to reach a new contract. “Staffing in our stores is at an unsustainable level,” he said. “Workers are asked to do the job of two or three people, leading to bare shelves and long lines…. We hope that this [strike] gives us an opportunity to raise our concerns to the public because they have been falling on deaf ears with the employer.”
