Safeway Manitoba final offer was big concession package
Members of UFCW Local 832 who work for Safeway stores in Manitoba remain in the dark about their new contract. Their contract dispute was taken to binding arbitration by agreement between the company and the union last fall and the arbitrator's ruling was finally issued last week. The union immediately announced that certain portions of the ruling were unclear. Which ones? No one is saying. Even the members have not been told. The company and Local 832 are meeting in an attempt to hammer out an understanding about whatever it is that the arbitrator didn't make clear.
What's unclear about the new contract is anyone's guess, but what is clear is that the company's final offer to the union was another classic hack and gouge concession package. Here are some highlights:
Buyout packages to full time workers worth up to $30,000.
All hours made available by workers taking buyouts to go to new hires.
A two tier wage scale under which newly hired workers would get $7.05 per hour to start and $12.05 per hour after 10,000 hours.
In addition, the company was seeking inclusion of the following language:
Buyout - The objective is to allow the Company to restructure its labour costs in the Manitoba store. The intent is to minimize the impact on existing employees and instead to affect replacement employees hired after ratification.
Local 1518's Tommy Fawkes said in 1996:
quote:
Overwaitea Food Group enjoyed a collective agreement with a no-strike clause that allowed them to maintain lower wage and benefit rates than Safeway for the first six years the company was in business. The union agreed to such an agreement which, in effect, protected Overwaitea from the industry standard in order to provide the company time to establish itself in the market so that it could create good-paying, long-term, full-time jobs for our members.
You'd think that these guys would learn that once you give a concession, you ain't never gettin' it back. Once you set a bottom all others will insist on matching the bottom.
When will these guys ever stop trying to help employers to manage their businesses?
Let's see if the Manitoba arbitrator took the bait.
Well ufcw 1518 members are getting a good look at what Safeway was asking local 832 members to give up in way of concessions.
1518 has given it's members Manitoba Safeways' last and final offer to peruse. (ufcw 1518's CA ends with Safeway/OFG in 2003)
Now I know I have asked this before, what would be the purpose of the machine taking the company shenanigans on the road? 
The arbitration decision maybe (once it's interpreted
) but not the threats! 
The company line lets members know what they were facing. When they get a bad deal instead of an abominable deal, they think they won something.
It's sort of like if you think you are going to die and just get a royal beating instead, you start to count yourself lucky.
In this case, it doesn't have to be that way, but it's politically expedient.
the deal is bogus, there will be a 2$/hour diffrence in the top scale between new employees and old employees, making old employees targets, and new employees bitter about being shafted. To top it all off safeway is not happy because they didn't get the salary reduction they wanted and made it clear in april 30 winnipeg free press that they will be seeking salary cuts when the contract expires in 2003, so all they did is buy a little time. Safeway will make a take it or we leave offer in 2003 and they will either pull up stumps or the union will have to take another consession contract. Either way this decision by the arbritrator has left the door open to more concessions, safeway has already been quoted as saying " they will no longer be in the buisness of providing people with careers" the union should have stood its ground and not gone to that binding arbitration crap. Everyone knows that its tough to get a pro lobour arbitator, we had 10 years of Progressive conservative goverments that stacked most of the arbitrator jobs with pro management people. Besides when is the last time you've see a union get a fair shake from an arbitrator. What was ufcw and Bernie Christophe thinking!!! I feel sorry for the safeway workers.
Hey, if you can't organize Wal-Mart, turn your existing members into Wal-Mart-like workers. Then you can have the experiece of representing Wal-Mart employees without the hassle of having to organize them.
It's amazing how Safeway threatens to pull out of BC and Alberta and then as soon as a few short months after a contract is ratified they (Safeway) begin re-modeling and building new stores. It takes years of planning and municipal licensing and permitting (and a lot of money) to get approval for such projects, this certainly does not sound like a company that already has it's bags packed and is ready to leave.
This is simply an effective business strategy that Safeway Canada can use, claiming to not be making any profit, especially since it is not a public company in Canada it can manipulate the books any way it wishes or as we have seen, transfer large sums of money to the American Division and then say 'boo hoo, we have no cash.'
The way Canada Safeway is re-structuring its Canadian Divisions, is that the profits are primarily not being made at store level anymore but at Head office, where the deals with major distributors is made and paid.
Didn't Jimmy Pattison say in reference to Safeway losing money 'that if he gave his accountants a couple of hours he could make it look like he was losing money also.'
Safeway will never pull out of a market where it has the primary advantage of location, which it has in Canadian markets. Safeway has a long term strategy of trying to lower employees wages by playing the 'Wal-Mart' card and then building and acquiring many 'neighbourhood markets.'
Consider that Safeway has close to 45% if the Alberta market and 33% of the Manitoba market and close to 30% of the BC market. Oh, I'm sure they are going to pull out. 
Of course they are not going to pull out but the threat of doing so gets government and people up in arms and they they put the pressure on the unions to accept so they don't lose major employers. Ufcw in manitoba fell for the oldest negotiation tactic in the book " if the company isn't getting it's way threaten to move". This tactic has become very popular in manitoba, John Buhler, Motor Coach Industries ect. have all used give us what we want or we move threat to gain concessions from the provincial governments and the Unions.The sad part is that we have an NDP (supposedly pro labour gov.) that is pressuring unions to accept these concessions so they wont lose a major employer. Also wal-mart and other local industries try to prevent unionozation of their employees by threats of if you unionize we will close up shop. Now Safeway is playing that card and Bernie Christohpe is an idiot for falling for it. or is it that he only cares about getting dues from the members? Of couse the aren't leaving its not like people are going to stop buying food, in some areas in manitoba the only grocery store is safeway there are no major competetors in the area.
