The United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Local 791, says it represents about 5,600 members at 38 Shaw’s Supermarkets across Massachusetts and Rhode Island and two Shaw’s distribution centers in Methuen, Mass., and Wells, Maine.
Yesterday, those workers “overwhelmingly approved” a new five-year contract, according to a statement posted on the Local 791 Web site. The union negotiating committee had “reached a tentative agreement with the company for Retail and Wells at approximately 5:30 a.m.,” the UFCW said.
“This contract provides great benefits for our associates, while allowing Shaw’s to be competitive and flexible to serve our customers better than anyone else in the marketplace,” Shaw’s President Larry Wahlstrom said.
Details of the pact were not immediately available. But the company said the agreement includes raises, increases in company contributions to health care benefits and a continuation of pension benefits. The contract “covers 5,200 associates employed at 38 stores in southern Massachusetts and Rhode Island,” the chain added, in a statement that made no mention of the distribution-center workers.
Retail workers and employees of Shaw’s Methuen distribution center voted on the pact in a series of UFCW meetings yesterday at the Taunton Holiday Inn, while employees of the Maine distribution center convened at 7 last night at Wells High School.
At the Saturday talks, supermarket and union negotiators reportedly were joined by a federal mediator. A similar showdown between Shaw’s and the UFCW in 2004 also was resolved without a strike.
