Supermarkets Make a Deal
California Action Influenced Both Sides in Negotiations
Washington Post
By Neil Irwin and Michael Barbaro, Washington Post Staff Writers
March 31, 2004
The deal that led to a new contract for Washington area grocery workers was hammered out in a hotel on Maryland's Eastern Shore, but it owes its outcome partly to Southern California.
Out west, similar negotiations led to a bitter strike that ended only a month ago, costing supermarket chains hundreds of millions of dollars in lost profits and costing 59,000 workers five months of wages. All of which made representatives of Giant Food LLC, Safeway Inc. and the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 quick to compromise and avoid the same misery here.
Safeway was particularly burned by the California strike and Giant, while not involved in California, could ill afford such a cash drain with its parent company, Royal Ahold NV, still recovering from a financial scandal....
"The fact that wage cost becomes a rallying cry during negotiations ought not to blind us to the fact that much more is involved in being competitive," said HARLEY SHAIKEN, A PROFESSOR AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA IN BERKELEY who specializes in labor relations from the union standpoint. "Their future is heavily dependent on broader strategies, especially providing good service."...
Source: UC Berkeley in the News
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