This January, after 10 months of negotiations between Kroger and UFCW Local 7, workers launched an Unfair Labor Practice strike across 78 King Soopers and City Market stores in the Denver Metro Area. The strike lasted for 10 days before members ratified a new contract which not only denied all concessions demanded by the company but also increased wages, improved benefits, improved safety measures, and significantly weakened the hated two-tier system that divides workers on the job. As one of the most significant strikes in recent US history, Local 7’s fight is an inspiration to workers everywhere. There are important lessons we can all learn from this strike about the power of getting organized, the necessity of rank and file initiative, and how struggles for justice on the job can bring a community closer together.
Returning to work after a hard-won victory, a Local 7 member speaks about the experience of the strike and how to prepare for the future…
The January strike might have seemed to come out of nowhere but it was a long time coming. Strike talk began the day we snapped a photo of a temp doing work meant for people from the bargaining unit. That incident was really the nail in the coffin. The company had been harassing union members for a while; banning union apparel, telling lies about the union, and of course trying to squeeze us as much as possible out of the workers. Their profits are all that matter to them, not the people who actually do the work to get them that money. That really showed during negotiations for our new contract, which took almost a year. They made a lot of regressive proposals and demanded dozens of concessions. They really proved to us that they did not want to bargain in good faith and they basically made us choose between a strike or a surrender to even worse conditions.
To be honest, people were ready to strike before negotiations even began. Everyone was done with the company. Nobody was being paid fairly and the store couldn’t keep enough staff because they kept pay so low. Everyone who did stay was working harder than they should have to because we were constantly short-staffed. Fuel was always getting closed early and the service desk was practically closed for 5 months before the strike because so many people had quit. The ultimate slap in the face was that while we were stretching ourselves to the limit with the same pay, barely making ends meet, Kroger would bring in temps and pay them $18 an hour. Then when negotiations started, the company was lowballing us with every proposal. That finally cemented it for people that we had to strike.
During negotiations the company reps would leave for 5 hours at a time before coming back to the bargaining table. That’s when we would get out the signs, write out “On Unfair Labor Practice Strike,” and otherwise get ready for what we all knew was coming. Everyone in the store was scared to strike but they were ready nonetheless. I wore a sign under my name badge that said, “We are ready to strike!” Every time my coworkers saw it they got all fired up and started yelling “hell yeah,” right in the store in the middle of the day. The night before the strike began, the night crew clocked in knowing that when 5:00 AM hit, they were walking out. We all joked around and said things like, “at dawn, we strike.”
I think the reason people were scared was mostly just because no one had any previous experience. I would be bombarded with questions about pay, health insurance, and job security. People were generally unfamiliar with what a strike even is, let alone how they actually go down. I see this as a failure on the part of union leadership. They should be educating everyone in their shops about the ins-and-outs of these situations way before they begin. I think we saw a lot of ways that we could have been better prepared. The internal life of the Local is very closed off and top down. It’s hard to find out who is actually a member and there are few avenues for rank and file participation. The reps only come out to stores with very specific agendas and never just to check up on folks. There is also next to no education for members. They do conduct training for new folks but only to cover surface-level facts about what a union is and how it works. The Local could stand to make more educational materials and set up classes to get into the details of how the union works, the challenges it faces, and how members can play a role.
But it’s not like people are indifferent or disengaged. The lead up to the strike was like the lead up to a battle. It was really stressful but even though things were tense, you could feel a certain sense of duty to your coworkers and all the people who will ever work in the store; a duty to make it a better place to work. Being on strike was wonderfully empowering. This was my first strike and I was nervous but I was ready to take on this company and prove that workers should be the top priority. I knew a bit about what the strike would look like because I had been involved in other strike efforts around Denver, but I had never actually done so as an employee on strike. All that unease and anxiety felt like extra pounds I was carrying around but once the clock hit 5:00 AM, we began our picket line and all that weight just fell away. People were enthusiastic to stand up for themselves and get to push back. People were excited to get on the picket line but they also wanted a lot more information than is possible to give while picketing. That’s one example of how more education could have helped us out before the strike.
We were sort of lucky at our store because management was largely supportive of our efforts and believed we could get a better contract. One time an Assistant Store Manager (ASM) called the cops on us because he thought we were infringing upon a partial restraining order that Kroger filed against us. That was a blast and that ASM is still getting the cold-shoulder from many of the employees who were there. The cops being called fueled the fire for a lot of folks on the picket line. It made people mad that he would do such a thing, it showed people that the managers of the store are not on our side and that their bottom line is always going to be profit. That ASM is now very aggressive in policy enforcement and everyone hates the guy because of it and he knows it too.
Community support was what made the strike so successful. The solidarity of customers who came to King Soopers every week made standing out in the snow and ice a little more tolerable. The support primarily came from people who have shopped here for years and know us well. Joe Kelley even said publicly that part of the company’s motivation to come to an agreement with us was that many longtime customers were boycotting the store for the duration of the strike. A lot of them said that we got them through the COVID Lockdown so they had our backs in the strike effort. Times like this really show the sort of mutual dependence that really makes a community. Sadly, there were a good number of customers who did not support us and crossed the picket line. I think this can be attributed mostly to the location of my shop. I’m in Golden Colorado and the town tends to lean liberal but there is still a sizable part of the population which is very conservative and anti-union due to things like the daily unionization effort at the Coors factory.
I wasn’t on the bargaining committee but I went to every session of negotiations and of course I voted on motions. All members have a right to vote on those issues. For the most part, UFCW is a fairly top down organization, we get to vote on some things but far too much of the leadership is just appointed. I think more elected positions and more of a commitment to seeking input from the members in general could make people feel more invested and more motivated to get involved in the union on a day-to-day basis.
The strike was a huge victory. We won the most significant wage increase ever secured by a UFCW Local for grocery workers. We got all the concessions out of the contract but we didn’t manage to get the two-tier system pulled out. We did shrink the gap between the tiers, which was a step forward, and I hope we can completely eliminate tiers in the next contract. I think that in the future members need to know the ins-and-outs of the contract and the language used in it so when it gets infringed upon the members can call it out immediately, demand action, and not just leave it to the stewards or reps to find what is being violated. The Local needs to prepare members for the next round of negotiations by telling them what negotiations are, how they work and what to expect. A more democratic union is more powerful because more people believe in the intentions of the union and feel a stake in it. A lot of people were mad at the union because of lies that were spread about how much the union president makes and rumors that it’s somehow in her personal interest to drag out the negotiations and force a strike. I think when leadership is elected, members have fewer doubts about their intentions.
Local 7 pulled off one of the best and largest strike efforts in recent history. Hopefully with their credibility going up, not only will the Local get more powerful but more participatory and democratic as well.