A customer leaves a Safeway store in Cupertino, Calif. Feb. 23, 2011. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Paul Sakuma)
WINNIPEG — Safeway workers in Manitoba have voted in favour of accepting a new five-year collective agreement from their employer.
The new deal increases wages and funding for the members’ benefits plan, as well as addresses cashier concerns over scheduling and allows cashiers to refuse a customer’s unsanitary re-usable bag without facing discipline from management.
“Our bargaining team worked extremely hard to represent the concerns of the 1,700 Safeway workers across Manitoba,” said Jeff Traeger, UFCW 832 president and lead negotiator.
“While we still strongly believe that they deserve more after working on the front line for the past two years, this new agreement includes wage and benefit improvements that are above-and-beyond comparison to other unionized retail grocery workers.”
Traeger says the new agreement makes Safeway employees the highest paid, unionized retail workers in the province.
In late February after the Safeway bargaining committee feared their employer was not taking their requests seriously.
During bargaining, both the union and Sobeys Capital Incorporated, agreed to move Manitoba’s six FreshCo stores to their own bargaining unit, so that FreshCo members will have their concerns addressed without being overshadowed by the larger group of Safeway members.
