Last week, Local 401 of the United Food and Commercial Workers published an update regarding workers employed Sobeys at their Safeway stores.
Sobeys Capital owns Safeway stores in Calgary, Banff, Brooks, Camrose, Canmore, Edmonton, Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie, Hinton, Lethbridge, Lloydminster, Medicine Hat, Red Deer, and Wetaskiwin.
Their most recent collective agreement—technically 3 agreements (here, here, and here)—expired a year ago, in August 2025.
Those agreements cover over 7,000 workers across Alberta.
Negotiations have not been pleasant, with Sobeys wanting to roll back benefits and freeze wages. And that is on top of wanting to reverse wage increases in the previous contract and make workers pay back wages they had already received, as well as allegedly laying off workers who were on the bargaining committee.
In an update back in June, Local 401 said, “From a $750 million write-down of Voilà [Sobey’s online delivery service] to closing down stores that will be converted to other brands, it has become clear to your union that they are not acting in our members’ best interests”.
It was clear that bargaining was at an impasse, so Local 401 applied for mediation. Well, according to last week’s update, mediation ended, and there still is no tentative agreement.
The workers’ bargaining team is scheduled to meet with the employer for another round of bargaining between the 15th and 17th of next month.
However, they would like to come into those negotiations with a strike mandate.
At the beginning of June, the bargaining team held a virtual town hall meeting, during which 93% of the attendees voted to holding a strike vote “if mediation ends unfairly”.
The bargaining team is moving forward in honouring that decision. They plan to hold another town hall meeting tomorrow evening at 19:00.
Workers at tomorrow’s virtual town hall meeting will hear the latest bargaining updates, can ask questions, and will learn more about what comes next as they prepare for strike votes.
Richelle Stewart, the secretary treasurer for Local 401 reminds workers that a strike vote is about increasing leverage; it is not a guarantee of an immediate vote:
It is important for members to understand that a strike vote does not mean we are going on strike the next day. A strike vote is about showing Sobeys/Safeway that we are united and willing to take strike action if the company fails to offer a substantial and fair deal in the next round of bargaining. A strong yes vote will give our bargaining team the leverage we need to push Sobeys/Safeway to come back with a fair settlement.
UFCW Local 401 president Thomas Hesse agrees.
Our members don’t want to strike. They want to be at work serving their customers. But Sobeys needs to understand what is at stake. When customers see angry workers standing outside their local Safeway, we expect many of them will stay away.
If Local 401 moves forward with a strike vote and a majority of the members participating decide to support striking, they are targeting Thanksgiving as a potential start to a strike, assuming it even comes to that.
Update (31 August 2026): UFCW Local 401 submitted an application to the Alberta Labour Relations Board on 26 August to request a board-supervised strike vote.
Update (11 September 2026): Sobeys Capital Incorporated applied to the labour board for a lockout poll, so they might try to lock out workers before they go on strike.
Update (12 September 2026): ALRB approved the strike vote, and the vast majority of the workers who participated threw their support behind striking. Retail workers voted 86% in favour, meat workers in the south half of the province voted 93% in favour, and meat workers in the north half voted 90% in favour. Calgary workers voted 87% in favour, Edmonton workers voted over 90%, and some Alberta cities passed the 95% mark. The bargaining committee will bring this strong strike mandate back to negotiations next week.
Update (15 September 2026): Workers served Sobeys with strike notice today. If the two parties cannot reach an agreement, workers will go on strike, which cannot begin until 7 October 2026.
