Safeway and Giant broadly publicized plans to hire strikebreakers if the workers walked out, and the contract negotiations and vote here took place against the backdrop of the five-month strike by 60,000 grocery workers in California that ended in March. The supermarket bosses there won the bulk of their demands, imposing a steep two-tier wage and benefit setup.

Several reports in the big business media here characterized the new agreement as a victory for both the companies and the union.

On health care, which many workers considered the central issue in negotiations, significant changes were made in the new agreement. The annual deductible current employees covered by the existing plans will pay will increase to $200 from $100. The maximum amount workers will pay each year from their own pockets will increase from $2,500 to $4,000. Prescription drug co-payments will also increase.

Workers hired after March 30, 2004, will work under a new plan. While maintaining the $4,000 maximum out-of-pocket expense ceiling, the new plan raises the deductible to $300, increases prescription drug co-payments by a greater percentage, and mandates a 25 percent employee co-payment for health insurance premiums.

Wage increases for the majority of full-time workers will be $1.25 over four years. Many employees, however, work part time in lower-paid classifications and will receive a wage increase of 65 cents to $1.05 over four years.

Another significant change is the premium wage workers hired after March 30 will receive for Sunday work—$1.00 for the first year of the contract, $1.50 for the second year, and $2.00 for the third and fourth years.

Darryl Johnson, a food clerk and cashier at a Safeway in Washington, D.C., told the Militant, “I thought the contract was pretty good. But I disagree with what the new workers will get. That’s the bad stuff. They should have gotten the same things we did when we started.” Johnson, who has worked for Safeway for five years, is still classified as part-time, even though he works 40 plus hours per week.

Local 400 President James Lowthers told the Washington Post that while he opposes creating new pay and benefit tiers, arguing that they pit new workers against older ones, the presence of such a tier in the new contract would encourage workers to remain at the companies for a longer period of time. “We would prefer not to do it,” he said, “but contracts are compromises.”

Buddy Mays, president of UFCW Local 27 in Baltimore, said, “this contract will probably be the model contract for the entire nation,” the Baltimore Sun reported.

A cashier clerk at a Safeway store in Washington, D.C., who declined to give his name, told the Militant, “This is my last contract, so that influenced my thinking. People here were ready to fight, and the Teamsters and others we talked to were ready to honor our picket lines. But in the end this was about the best we were going to get considering what happened in California.”

John Hawkins is a meat cutter and member of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400. Janice Lynn and Nancy Boyasko also contributed to this article.  
 
 
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