According to the United Food & Commercial Workers Local 7, the grocery union in Colorado, around 7,000 workers are employed at Safeway or Albertsons stores in Colorado. Workers in metro Denver, Boulder, Broomfield, Castle Rock, Conifer, Evergreen, Fountain, Grand Junction, Idaho Springs, Parker, Pueblo, Salida, Steamboat Springs and Vail all voted to authorize strikes.
In metro Denver, 99 percent of Safeway workers voted to strike.
“We have been more than patient for months as the company slashed our hours and ignored workers’ proposals on staffing and other key issues,” Kevan Kohlman, a Safeway worker from Grand Junction, said in an announcement of the strike vote. “Time has run out.”
The strike would be an Unfair Labor Practices strike, as the workers allege that Albertsons has illegally negotiated in tandem with King Soopers — despite a merger between the companies falling apart. Additionally, the Safeway workers had a temporary agreement with the company to extend their contracts beyond their expiration dates, which included raises and improved benefits, that the company is now refusing to honor.
According to union president Kim Cordova, Safeway violating its own agreement with the union is another unfair labor practice. The union could strike as soon as Monday, June 9, if Safeway does not respond to its proposal, Cordova says.
Colorado workers are not alone. Nationally, over 150,000 UFCW and Teamsters grocery workers are negotiating new contracts. In addition to Colorado workers, those in Washington state and Southern California are holding strike votes this week.
Why Are Safeway Workers Striking?
According to Cordova, there are several contracts between Safeway and workers in various locations throughout Colorado, but all are expired at this point. The workers have been negotiating with their employers for nine months in a process that Cordova says has resulted in workers at Safeway stores last getting a raise in January 2024. “Workers now have gone eighteen months without a wage increase,” Cordova says. “This is really important to workers, especially living here in Colorado with the high cost of living. A lot of these grocery members are having to sell their plasma. They're part of the unhoused community that don't have places to live. While they're working for the largest profitable companies, they're still struggling.”
Economics have been the sticking point in negotiations, Cordova adds, as Safeway has proposed cuts to pension and health-care plans as well as putting forth an idea to allocate $9 million or more from the retiree benefit fund to current worker benefits. Workers want better staffing in stores both for worker safety and customer service reasons, she says, while Albertsons is unwilling to budge on staffing.
King Soopers workers, who are negotiating with their parent company Kroger right now, have seen the same sort of proposals. Cordova says the two companies are working together to put forth the same contracts so that they can both give fewer concessions to workers.
“This is really residue of the failed merger, and these companies still acting as if they became one company,” Cordova says. “They are both large employers that contribute into the same health and welfare — their health insurance fund as well as pension funds and a retiree benefit fund — so they are working in tandem as one to squeeze workers and retirees, as well as customers, by driving down the industry with low staffing.”
In 2022, Kroger announced it would purchase Albertsons in a $24.6 billion merger. Kroger has 148 stores in Colorado and Albertsons has 105. But the agreement was canceled in December 2024 after federal regulators and courts,along with state courts, all ruled against the merger, saying the consolidation would create an anticompetitive grocery market in the country.
At first the two companies dragged their feet on negotiations in hopes they’d be able to negotiate as one after the merger, Cordova says. Once the merger didn’t happen, they continued trying to negotiate together despite the union never agreeing to multi-employer bargaining.
“Safeway has the ability to settle this contract outside of King Soopers, and they're not doing it,” Cordova says.
King Soopers workers in Colorado have regularly struck over the years, including as recently as February. But Safeway workers have not authorized strikes since 1996, Cordova says. Now, the two companies are mirroring each other — so the workers plan to do the same.
“Safeway in Colorado remains committed to productive discussions with UFCW Local 7, and we have contract extensions in place while we do so,” the company says in a statement. “We respect the rights of workers to engage in collective bargaining and are negotiating in good faith to achieve an agreement. Our focus remains on providing exceptional service to our customers and fostering a positive working environment for our associates.”
But the union isn’t buying it. Colorado’s Safeway workers can pull their extension and strike within 72 hours if Safeway doesn’t reply to the union's proposal by the end of today, June 6.
