Union, Stop & Shop reach deal on pandemic pay premium
A tentative agreement between Stop & Shop and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union means 56,000 employees of the grocery giant will receive retroactive premium pay for having worked during the coronavirus pandemic in July and August.
The premium pay announced Friday will come in the form of lump sum
payments equal to 10 percent of all hours worked between July 5 and August 22. The payments are designed to recognize the efforts and risks taken by grocery workers to make sure communities have adequate food and supplies during the pandemic.
Nearly 13,000 Stop & Shop workers in Connecticut will receive the payments, according to union officials. The premium pay included in the agreement is in addition to an initial premium pay deal between March and July that boosted Stop & Shop workers pay by 10 percent.
The initial agreement, announced in late March also gave Stop & Shop workers two additional weeks of paid leave if they become sick.
UFCW International President Marc Perrone and Stop & Shop President Gordon Reid said in a joint statement that “UFCW members and Stop & Shop workers have gone above and beyond to ensure that our stores have remained open to serve our communities’ essential needs” since the pandemic reached the United States in March.
“These workers have risen to the challenge and Stop & Shop deeply appreciates everything they have done in difficult circumstances — at work and at home — as they care for their neighbors and their families during a national crisis.” the statement said in part.
“Working in partnership when the pandemic began to take hold, UFCW International and UFCW local unions together with Stop & Shop offered union members a temporary premium. When that pay raise expired in July, the UFCW local unions and members asked Stop & Shop to do what is right for grocery workers and UFCW members.”
Bert Flickinger, managing director of New York City-based Strategic Resource Group, called the premium pay agreement “a smart strategic investment” for Stop & Shop and a recognition that keeping veteran employees from leaving also protects the grocery chain’s market share.
“They were losing some of their best most experienced employees for a while,” Flickinger said. “When you lose somebody who knows the customer’s name and what they like, it’s a problem. And it takes at least a half a year or more until you get the same level of productivity out of their replacement.”
Decreased productivity is a problem, he said, particularly when it comes in the departments where grocery stores make a lot of their money: Seafood and meat counters, produce and deli counters.
Stop & Shop is facing a challenge from big box retailers such as Costco and BJ’s Wholesale Club for customers as well as workers. Costco pays $4 more per hour to its workers than most grocery chains, according to Fickinger.
Since it’s strike in 2019, Stop & Shop has been losing customers to Costco and BJ’s, he said. And each customer lost costs Stop & Shop between $5,000 and $10,000 a year in revenue.
The retroactive premium pay deal excludes any paid time off accrued during the targeted time period and does not apply to any employees represented by UFCW local unions currently engaged in contract negotiations with the company.
In addition to premium pay for workers, the tentative agreement calls on Stop & Shop to observe a moment of silence, starting next year, on Labor Day and Workers Memorial Day to recognize the grocery workers who lost their lives to COVID-19.
UFCW officials say they have confirmed the death of 105 grocery workers due to COVID-19 and at 15,484 more workers who were infected by the virus or exposed to it.
The unionized Stop & Shop workers are part of the UFCW’s membership base of has more than 1.3 million members in grocery, retail, and other service industries.