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Workers picketing in front of Mountain View’s Nob Hill grocery store were asking customers not to cross the picket line Tuesday. Grocery store workers across California and Nevada went on strike this week.
In the first strike ever to hit the 77-year-old family-run company, union officials say that 7,500 employees are facing the loss of union control over health benefits, loss of premium pay for holidays and Sundays, and a wage freeze for two years. The biggest irritation, said a union spokesperson, is what appears to be an effort to weaken the union and a “take-it-or-leave-it attitude for the last fifteen months,” by the company during negotiations, which broke down around 2:30 a.m. Sunday, despite the help of a federal mediator.
“We just want to keep what we have,” said one worker in front of the Mountain View store on Tuesday. “We don’t want to be out here, this is stressful. We understand what they are going through,” she said of the company. “Its a tough time, a tough economy.”
“We know most of the customers here,” said one long-time employee who was picketing with her husband, also a Nob Hill employee. They said they had a mortgage and two daughters to put through college. “We want this settled. We pray every night.”
The company has hired non-union workers to keep the store open, one of whom got into an argument with the picket line, workers recalled on Tuesday. A customer eventually stepped in to side with the picketers, they said. The union members cheered every time a customer expressed solidarity with the strike and turned away from the store. Some customers went inside anyway.
The UFCW reportedly has a $60 million strike fund and is paying workers $200 a week to keep the strike going, a big reduction from the $840 a week the highest paid union members make at Nob Hill.
Company spokesperson John Segale did not return calls to the Voice, but has reportedly claimed that the company proposes to keep medical benefits at current levels and that the union is simply using the strike as a scare tactic. United Food and Commercial Workers union spokesperson Mike Henneberry disagreed.
“If you look at their track record over the past three years, they have done nothing but slash benefits for management employees and eliminated retiree medical coverage for employees in corporate offices and a handful of non-union stores,” Henneberry said. “They want to apply those same conditions to their union members.”
Henneberry said the company proposes to eliminate a trust fund for health care benefits for employees and retirees, and eliminate the trust’s oversight board where union representatives hold half the votes. That would allow health-care benefits to be more easily cut in the future, Henneberry said.
In contrast to harmonious labor negotiations in the past, Henneberry called the latest negotiations a “blitzkrieg.” He pointed a finger at the man in charge of the company’s labor negotiations, Bob Tiernan, former chair of the Oregon Republican Party and a labor relations consultant who helped the Berkeley Bowl grocery store stop a unionization effort, Henneberry said. Henneberry said Tiernan’s negotiation style was “completely inflexible” and that his latest proposals were much the same as the ones he made 15 months ago.
Nob Hill employees earn some of the highest salaries in the industry while the chain competes with a growing number of non-union grocery stores. Henneberry said that non-union competition was “a real issue,” but questioned whether the company was really suffering. He said in the past the company was satisfied with union contracts similar to what the UFCW has with Safeway and Lucky, where union members urged Nob Hill customers to shop instead on Tuesday.
“If you were in financial trouble you would want to work with employees, not force them out on the street,” Henneberry said. “They have told us twice they would allow us to see all their books. Both times they have refused to fully divulge what the numbers are.”
“If they are able to break down our benefits it is going to affect everybody,” Henneberry said, calling the strike a fight against a continuing “race to the bottom” for all workers.
Ok, I’ll be the first to post a comment; I have been shopping at the Mtn. View Nob Hill store since it opened. I like the Post Office, US Bank, Self Service check out, and Deli. What I don’t like is having to cross a “picket line” just to be able to use these services. So let’s take a small look at UFCW currently picketing there. According to this article, The UFCW has a $60 million strike fund setup for its 7,500 strikers and is paying them $200.0 per week, (or $5.0 per hr) which comes to 1.5 million per week for all the strikers.This will only last 40 weeks before the UFCW runs out of money; in those 40 weeks, there goes Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year, Birthdays, etc, all the way to 4th of July, 2013. Personally, I wish they go the 40 weeks and run out of money. During that time Nob Hill will have trained Non-Union employees and will start to lower their prices in time for the holidays. Then I hope the 7,500 strikers will go out and use there Butcher, Baker, Cashiering, Postal, etc skills to start their OWN small community business and take some of the customers that shopped at Nob Hill with them. In turn, this should help the strikers from feeling like victims and take charge of their OWN income, insurance, health, 401K, tax breaks, and retirement plans, and not be dependent on the UFCW to speak for them. That way the strikers will get the true American way of doing business in a free world. You never see the people who stand on the street corner “picketing”. Everybody wins, I love small personal businesses. Good Luck.
I shopped at the MV NH store each and every weekend. I really enjoyed the experience. The atmosphere was very pleasant compared to Safeway and I became friends with the checkers and baggers…really nice and fun people. Hopefully they end the strike soon because as of now I’m not even activating my “Something Extra” rewards. Get to the bargaining table and BARGAIN. I on’t cross a picket line made up of my friends.
I think Nob Hill Foods has had a tradition of the Best employees for any grocery store chain. They are happy people and treat their customers with the highest respect. I have been shopping at Nob Hill Foods since I was a kid at the Morgan Hill Store, then in the 80’s they opened the store in Watsonville. I started shopping there. I even worked there for 5 years. I can say that these stores make money, The Capitola store in the 90’s made over 100k a week on a slow week. The stores in this area are full of customers, happy customers. But right now at the Watsonville Store they are lucky if they get 20 customers in 1 day. They are even closing at 8PM. I say, support these employees. They deserve to have their Holiday pay and their Sunday Pay. While we are home they are working. DONT CROSS THE PICKET LINES!
Sorry to see the strike. I too use Nob Hill as my grocer of choice, due entirely to the friendly staff and pleasant shopping experience. But it’s tough to be sympathetic with their plight, when they’re being paid well for doing a basically simple job, on which they can readily be replaced. The union tactic of ‘give us what we want, or we’ll ruin your business’ is simple extortion, and should be recognized as such.
I have been a 30-year Nob Hill customer, beginning with the Cupertino store. I frequently shop for groceries for other families as a part of my job, and I have always used Nob HIll as my main store. I have seen the same employees for decades, and it is a big draw for my connection to the store. That Raley’s corporation now places so little value on these loyal and long-time employees is a mark of corporate greed. They are attempting to take away Sunday and Holiday pay as well as health care benefits and driving workers to go on strike. That Raley’s has hired outside professionals to break the unions is inexcusable. There is plenty of money at the top, and priorities have to be set straight. Employees are not a commodity. I am currently taking my business to Safeway or Lucky, where workers are unionized. I will not shop at Nob Hill again until the strike is over, and workers have a fair contract.
I agree. No more Nob Hill Foods for me.
The picketers were nice and polite when I went to NHM to buy some groceries last night, at least. I’ll continue to shop there, and do not support unions and don’t believe they are useful in the modern economic model.
Another example of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer…what a state this country is in…nothing but corporate greed! Don’t cross the picket lines, stand up to GREED!