Earlier this month, Local 401 of the United Food & Commercial Workers posted an update regarding contract negotiations for workers employed in 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 last August.
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 their most recent update, Local 401 said that they recently held a virtual meeting on the 3rd in which hundreds of Safeway workers joined over Zoom or over the phone.
Local 401 president Thomas Hesse and its secretary-treasurer Richelle Stewart hosted the 2-hour meeting to update workers on the current state of bargaining.
They also asked workers where they stood on several issues, the mast majority of which showed disappointment, at the least, in Sobeys’ ability to bargain in good faith.
| Is Sobeys operating and promoting Safeway well? | No: 93% |
| Do you trust Sobeys? | No: 96% |
| Should the union be more aggressive in bargaining? | Yes: 93% |
| If mediation ends unfairly, should we hold a strike vote? | Yes: 93% |
In their update, 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”.
“Simply put, Sobeys needs to do a much better job of investing in their Safeway employees and their workplaces. Our members show up to every single shift and do the hard front-line work that helps make Sobeys one of the most profitable grocers in North America,” said Hesse. “It is a disservice to our members for Sobeys to do anything less than their best to make Safeway a great place to work and for customers to shop from.”
“These results are a direct message to Sobeys—workers are fed up with how poorly the company has handled bargaining and their constant use of bullying tactics,” explained Steward. “When you seek leave [from bargaining] to appeal from the Supreme Court of Canada to roll back workers’ hard-earned wage increases, it is no wonder trust is at an all-time low.”
It is clear that bargaining is at an impasse, so Local 401 applied for mediation.
Assuming the mediator can make a recommendation that the workers’ bargaining committee—which includes 36 Safeway workers from stores in Brooks, Calgary, Camrose, Canmore, Chestermere, Edmonton, Grande Prairie, Hinton, Lethbridge, St. Alberta, Spruce Grove, and Wetaskiwin—feels they can bring back to the workers’, the workers can vote on whether to accept it.
If they reject it, Sobeys will need to sweeten their offer, or the workers will vote on whether to approve a strike.
Should the workers vote in favour of striking, the bargaining committee can use that as leverage in bargaining, pressuring Sobeys to make concessions as a way to improve the material conditions of these workers.
And if that fails, the workers would likely file a 72-hour strike notice and then go on strike.
But we should not get too far ahead of ourselves. They have tet to meet with the mediator.
Last year, Empire Company Limited, which owns Sobeys, $700 million in net earnings last year. In 2024, that number was $725 million, and it was $686 million in 2023.
