Willingness to take a stand wins workers a better deal, says union

EDMONTON – Superstore workers from the Edmonton area have endorsed a new contract which union spokespeople say is a vast improvement over the original offer put forward by the company.

In a vote held yesterday in Edmonton, the majority of Superstore employees in attendance voted in favour of the deal. Ratification meetings will now be held in seven other communities, including Calgary, Red Deer, Medicine Hat, Grande Prairie, Fort McMurray, Camrose and Lloydminster.

“This shows you what can be accomplished when workers are willing to stand up and fight for their rights,” said Doug O’Halloran, president of United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 401.

The tentative agreement caps more than a year-and-a-half of sometimes heated bargaining between Superstore’s parent company, Loblaws, and the union, which represents most of Superstore’s 5,000 employees in Alberta.

Tensions reached a peak in March and April after Superstore workers in the Edmonton-area voted to strike. The strike vote was eventually over-turned by a controversial ruling from the Alberta Labour Relations Board (ALRB) – but not before the union launched an aggressive advertising and public relations campaign.

“The ad campaign, coupled the obvious willingness of our members to hit the streets, had a really powerful effect,” said the union’s chief negotiator Tom Hesse. “It sent a message to the company that we really meant business.”

Hesse said the company also became more flexible at the bargaining table after Superstore workers in Saskatchewan staged a two-week strike in early April. He says management was eager to avoid a similar confrontation here in Alberta.

O’Halloran says the tentative agreement currently being voted on by Alberta Superstore workers represents a clear victory for the members.

“Before the Edmonton strike vote, management was demanding all sorts of concessions,” he says. “But this agreement has no roll-backs and no take-aways. In fact, it contains over thirty changes that were made since the Edmonton strike vote, including a number of important gains. It’s a deal the members can be proud of.”

When it comes to wages, Hesse points out that workers in some classifications will be getting almost double what they were originally being offered. But, he says the real victory can be seen in the way the new contract deals with employees’ concerns about respect and dignity in the workplace.

“Right from the beginning, our members told us that real issue for them was respect,” said Hesse. “They were tired of arbitrary treatment. They were tired of being pushed around. And they were tired of all the little indignities, like not being allowed to have water bottles at their tills and not being allowed to stay home with sick kids.”

Hesse says under the new agreement, Superstore workers will have many of the written guarantees they were looking for. For example, they will now be allowed to have water at their tills; they will be eligible for time off to stay home with sick family members and they won’t be hassled and pressured to come to work when they call in sick.

“We’re particularly proud of the dignity and respect clause that we were able to negotiate into the contract,” says O’Halloran. “It sets up a system that will clearly discourage management from mistreating workers. It’s the best clause of its kind in the industry in all of North America.”