NEW ENGLAND - (Business Wire) Thousands of grocery workers throughout Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut — members of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local Unions 1445, 328, 371, 1459, and 919 — are bargaining with their employer, Stop & Shop, for a fair contract. But Stop & Shop is taking an adversarial and confrontational position by placing advertisements in local papers, announcing the company is hiring temporary replacement workers.
This tactic is unnecessary and unproductive. Stop & Shop should focus its energy into negotiating a good contract with the local workers it already has -- the same workers who have made Stop & Shop the number one supermarket in the areas in which it operates. Those workers and their communities deserve the company’s loyalty in return, not scare tactics that needlessly frighten workers and customers. Stop & Shop can and should do better by its workers and customers.
The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) represents more than 1.3 million workers, with over 1 million in the retail food industry. The UFCW protects the rights of workers and strengthens America’s middle class by fighting for health care reform, living wages, retirement security, safe working conditions and the right to unionize so that working men and women and their families can realize the American Dream. www.ufcw.org
