By Cameron Harrison
Most workers who toil for Kroger understand that we exist in a state of constant precarity; we are consistently understaffed, overworked, and underpaid. We spend anywhere from 8 to 10 hours a day trying to keep up with the pace demanded upon us by our bosses. Oftentimes, our departments are staffed to the bare minimum with no account for our coworkers who may be sick, require family or medical leave, or just call-off frequently. When a call-off does happen, we are left with the same workload—except now the responsibility for completing the daily department tasks falls squarely on just a few workers.
Here in the Detroit area, those of us who labor for Kroger are represented by the large United Food and Commercial Workers Local 876 union. The union represents over 15,000 of us. As we’ve been told, either by our business agents, stewards, at union meetings, or on our merch, we are stronger together. That is true whether we work together to complete productive tasks or we come together as a union for collective action such as strikes, contract enforcement, or political action. The idea of collectivity is natural to us — just as natural as if the power goes out in our neighborhoods and the first thing we do is check on each other and make sure our neighbors have what they need to weather the storm.
In order to combat our everyday precarity, exploitation, and poor working conditions that the Kroger company is so uninterested in dealing with, we must take on our mantra of stronger together and make it a reality. Oftentimes, we may be welcoming to management and vendors “helping” out and stocking the shelves for us. It may seem as though this so-called friendly act by management or vendors performing our labor helps us complete our task and get through the day so that we can go home and get on with our lives.
But, this is not the case and actually harms us more than we may think it helps us. By management or vendors performing our work, they are stealing from the guaranteed rights that our union has fought for via our contract. When management or vendors labor for us it steals hours, and even jobs, from our fellow workers. Instead of calling someone in to work, maximizing hours of a coworker who may need extra, or keeping an adequate staff level for the store’s productivity, the Kroger company can save money by management doing the work and reap even more profits by doing so.
Article 8 Section C of the Metro Detroit Kroger Workers collective bargaining agreement with the Kroger company states that, “to preserve bargaining unit work, the Employer agrees that no supervisor, store management or any other person not covered by this Agreement shall perform any work customarily performed by employees covered by this Agreement… This includes Store Management, District Coordinators, Merchandisers, and Vendors.”
President Dan Pederson of UFCW Local 876 told us at our latest Steward Conference that we are “not paid by productivity, but per hour.” This means firstly that the pressure that Kroger pushes onto us for productivity (while we are short staffed, of course) is something that Kroger itself must deal with. If they wish to keep up with productivity, it is the responsibility of the employer to hire enough workers, train enough workers, and staff enough workers to complete what they think is best for their store. Our job is simply to show up on time, perform our duty, and generally be a fine employee. Beyond that, it’s not really our responsibility or even in our interests to care what Kroger does.
However, we must come to collectively understand and educate one another on our collective bargaining agreements. In fact, in our contract, the tools to collectively fight back against understaffing and being overworked are held within. By filing Article 8 Section C grievances when management or vendors perform our jobs, we can get paid out 1 hour worth of wages for every 15 minutes of labor performed by them. We can hit them where we know, and they know, it counts: their bottom line. If we uphold our contract and fight on the shop floor to enforce the rules mutually agreed upon, we can fight back against our collective precarity. We can force the company to do what we want and make it a necessity for them to hire, train, and staff at adequate levels. We can make sure our coworkers get to maximize their hours and even add to their paycheck with successful grievance payouts. Ultimately, what we need to do is struggle and fight over this issue because when we collectively fight back, we are stronger together.