Health care key issue for western Washington grocery workers

A possible strike by various grocery workers in western Washington won't impact the Safeway store in Moses Lake.

Advertisements by Safeway, QFC and Fred Meyer, seeking replacement workers in the event of a strike, appeared last week in papers in Seattle, Tacoma and other cities, according to Allied Employers, the Kirkland group that represents the chains in labor negotiations.

(The store in Moses Lake) is not impacted," said Cherie Myers, director of public affairs for Safeway. "Only western Washington stores would be impacted if there's a labor dispute."

Myers declined to say anything further, saying that any other questions would have to go through labor negotiators.

A three-year contract expires May 2, covering about 17,000 grocery workers and meat cutters in King, Snohomish and Pierce counties, said Allied Employers spokeswoman Melinda Merrill. Other contracts covering another 10,000 workers will expire through the summer and fall.

Merrill said that the advertisements do not mean that negotiations, which began April 2, have broken down.

"This is absolutely not an indication of where negotiations are," she told The News Tribune of Tacoma. "It's very normal and a usual part" of contract negotiations. She said contract talks could continue past May 2 if necessary.

She said she did not have estimates on how many jobs applications the stores might have received.

Dan Kully, spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers, told The News Tribune that while union leaders were not surprised by the ads, they considered the move to be "pursuing negotiations by intimidation."

Kully declined to characterize the negotiations, but said health care was a key issue.

Under the current contracts, employers pay 100 percent of health benefits. Union officials want to keep that; the employers are seeking to pay 80 percent of the premiums with employees paying for the rest.