Stop & Shop workers OK new contract
Vote to ratify contract comes 4 days after tentative deal was reached following 11-day strike
The two unions representing Stop & Shop employees in Connecticut on Thursday night ratified a tentative contract labor leaders negotiated with the company over the weekend.
United Food and Commercial Workers Locals 371 and 919 met in Southbury and New Haven Thursday to provide members with details of the tentative contract agreement and to have them vote on the tentative contract. Local 919, which is located in Farmington, represents about 7,000 workers, including cashiers and employees who stock the shelves, while Westport-based Local 371 has about 4,000 members who work in the meat, fish and deli departments.
After meeting for a little over an hour, both union locals voted to ratify the contract.
Local 919 ratified the deal unanimously shortly after 8 p.m. Local 371 followed suit about 10 minutes later, ratifying the contract by acclimation.
UFCW Local 371 president Tom Wilkinson said Stop & Shop customers voted long before the union’s formal ratification, shopping for groceries at other stores to pressure the company. And he said the impact of unionized workers from Europe who traveled to the strike sites on their own dime to lend support.
“I think it puts the union in a better place,” Wilkinson told Hearst Connecticut Media after an overwhelming vocal vote by acclamation by the hundreds of union members in attendance, just after 8 p.m. “We did our job on the picket lines, but it’s not something that we’re going to gloat about. We are going to be very proud of the operation we had. You think about it: Shutting down 240 stores down — in 10 minutes.”
Wilkinson’s counter with Local 919, Mark Espinosa, said “everything the company was looking to take away from us didn’t go through.”
“We got excellent raises that are retroactive and the members are secure in knowing their pensions and their health plans are intact.”
“The membership walked off the job angry, but they are going back proud,” Wilkinson, said prior to the vote. “Negotiations are hard … and it seems like it’s always been like that in labor relations.”
At the Wyndham Southbury hotel just off Interstate
84, the Westport-based UFCW Local 371 set up a ballroom to accommodate
550 Stop & Shop workers voting on the contract there. The room erupted in applause as union leaders filed into the meeting, which was closed to reporters. Meanwhile, in New Haven, more than 700 members of Local 919 packed a ballroom at the Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale. Espinosa approached the podium and raised his clenched fists like a victorious prizefighter.
Espinosa called what the union achieved “a watershed moment.”
“We want to be able to show America, particularly non-union, what a strong union can do,” Espinosa said. “You are part of history.”
While passions were high on the picket lines, Wilkinson said the decision to end the 11-day strike had to be made because ultimately it would have done harm to both parties.
“That energy (from the workers) cannot last forever, so it got to a point when a decision had to be made where we came up with a tentative agreement,” he said. “If the strike continued, what more would be achieved? What more would’ve been worthwhile?”
“Naturally, If we got everything that we wanted, I don’t know how long the company would last,” Wilkinson said. “The tone of this negotiation was set very early. They knew where we were coming.”