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Tell Giant Eagle to Treat All its Workers with Respect!
Click here to see the intimidating and misleading letters Giant Eagle is sending to its non-union employees, trying to scare them away from talking to Local 23.
Click here for more pictures of Giant Eagle's arrest of one of its own workers.
Then
send
a letter to CEO David Shapira and tell him
to stop the smear campaign and let workers make up their own minds!
Giant Eagle Workers Stood Together to
Share the Success - Won New Contract Benefitting Workers, Company, and Community
What: UFCW Local 23 in
the Pittsburgh area has ratified a new contract with
grocery store Giant Eagle.
What's At Stake: Good, middle class jobs that provide for families and sustain Pittsburgh area communities.
Workers fought for jobs with:
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a secure retirement
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real wage increases
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affordable, quality health care for all workers
Bargaining Committee: Front Row: Sonny Linden
#33, Charene Kindle #17, Diane McDonald #67, Bob Elrick #33M, Second Row: Judy
Willoughby #52, Deb Wieloch #40, Jimmy D #70M, Michelle Frio #39, Third Row:
Derrick Watson #60M, Mary Jo Lipnichan #63M, Tony Helfer President, Nancy Smith
#72, Not pictured: Fran Gardner #14M
LINKS
UFCW Local 23 Facebook page
UFCW Local 23
Website
DOWNLOAD FLYERS
Giant Eagle Workers Stand Together
WATCH
VIDEOS
UFCW Member and Giant Eagle Worker Arrested Just for Talking to Co-Workers About Anti-Worker Actions Giant Eagle has Taken
Deb is a Giant
Eagle employee. And now Giant Eagle has had her arrested when
she tried to talk to her coworkers on her own time about our
employer’s anti-worker actions. How can Giant Eagle deny her
the right to free speech? Is this that what Giant Eagle means by
"company values?"
UFCW Members Rally for Good Jobs at Giant Eagle
from UFCW on
Vimeo.
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BARGAINING UPDATES
Now Giant Eagle workers have a new contract that covers approximately 5,800 employees at 36 Giant Eagle Stores in Western Pennsylvania and Northern West Virginia and will be in effect until June 28th 2014. Among other improvements, the contract includes:
“UFCW Local 23 members were facing a number of issues in these negotiations but our membership came together. The new contract is a testament to our solidarity and union spirit,” said Tony Helfer, UFCW Local 23 President. With a number of Giant Eagle franchise stores in the area where workers are not afforded the same rights and benefits as the UFCW Local 23 members, workers plan to take the energy and momentum from this bargaining process to work toward raising standards across the company.
Today was the seventh day of bargaining. There were a few more agreements made on some language issues. Giant Eagle said that the more we can reach agreements on work rules, the more generous the economics will be. We told Giant Eagle that we were unable to make any more movement without seeing their response to our economic proposals. Giant Eagle wanted to work tonight after negotiations so that they could respond to us with their revised economic proposal first thing in the morning. At this point in the negotiations, there are several major issues that have been argued repeatedly back and forth and each side has dug in on their positions. We are hopeful that Giant eagle will address our major economic issues tomorrow and we will be able to bring back to you an acceptable agreement. If not, we will continue to send Giant Eagle the message that we will not back down from making our jobs good family sustaining jobs. Health and welfare, premiums and wages are now the focal point. We have serious demands that must be met in order for the union to give a recommendation to the membership. The movement on these issue is slow but can move quickly at any moment. Continue to wear your buttons and stickers to show unity and strength. We need to stand strong together during this critical phase. Negotiations will resume tomorrow Friday, June 18th.
Today was the sixth day of bargaining and we began negotiations with a follow up presentation by AFLAC for our supplemental disability benefit proposal. We then responded to Giant Eagle’s proposals to which they said that they were “extremely disappointed”. Giant Eagle stated that it seems like the members want more money in the pension, want to improve their health benefits and want large wage increases but are not willing to agree to any worker productivity Company proposals. Giant Eagle said “that won’t happen”. Then a discussion started about Giant Eagle threatening our union representative with arrests for being in the stores, claiming that organizers were disrupting the members from doing their work. President Helfer explained that no-one has disrupted the members from their work and that is not what we are doing. Just then word came back that an organizer had been arrested at the Caste Village Store #31. The Union is going to take the appropriate legal action and we believe that it is wrong for them to try to silence our voices. Further, an employee, who was off the clock, was threatened with an arrest for talking to co-workers about what he had seen. The afternoon session began with tension but soon turned into a productive one that lasted into the late evening hours. We came to agreements on union leads and management exclusions, increases to lead premiums, improvements to vacations for employees hired after June 2004, and there was a clarification under Article 9.2A of the Grocery contract that this provision does not limit Giant Eagle’s ability to schedule employees for over 32 hours in a week. We presented Giant Eagle with our opening wage proposal, which we expect them to respond to us next week. Two additional days of bargaining have been agreed to for next week on Monday and Thursday. We still have our meeting set for this coming Monday, June 14th, with our stewards, bargaining committee and contract action committee to discuss where we are at in negotiations so they will be prepared to update you. Continue to wear your buttons and stickers to show unity and strength. We need to stand strong together during this critical phase. Negotiations will resume on Thursday June 18th.
There are still major serious issues to be discussed. We meet again on Thursday and we will respond to Giant Eagle’s proposals and counter with an economic proposal of our own. We will have another meeting this coming Monday, June 14th, with our stewards, bargaining committee and contract action committee to discuss where we are at in negotiations and they will be prepared to update you. Negotiations will resume on Thursday June 10th. Continue to wear your buttons and stickers to show unity and strength. We need to stand strong together during this critical phase!
Wear your buttons and stickers proudly. We are more powerful when we stand together. Our unity can make change for the better in this contract. Negotiations will resume on Tuesday, June 8th.
We anticipate getting into wages, benefits and pension in the upcoming sessions.
As always, we need to stay strong and
united to reach our goals. Each one of us has a
responsibility to ourselves and our fellow
union brothers and sisters to get involved in
this process. Wear your buttons proudly,
introduce yourself to others you’ve never
met before and share your experiences with them and let
them know that we are more powerful when we speak
together. Our unity can make change for
the better in this contract. Let’s “Share in the Success."
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