Over three days of negotiations that began on June 23, our Union Bargaining Team proposed two new packages that would deliver a living wage, dependable health care, and better working conditions for all. Instead of offering a serious counter-proposal, Macy’s Management offered health care takeaways and a lecture on the affordability crisis
Read MoreGiven these circumstances, our union entered effects bargaining with the company and came to an Agreement on a Memorandum of Understanding (“M.O.U.”) which would provide the impacted employees with certain layoff, transfer, and severance pay rights. This Memorandum required a vote by membership to approve. Details of the memorandum include:
Read MoreGrand Central Bakery workers came together in November 2025, and we overwhelmingly won our union election by 86% and now after months of bargaining, we are proud to have fought for a great first contract. When we came together and organized, we knew some of the biggest issues were low wages, inconsistent hours, and unpredictable scheduling. Our coworkers knew that something had to change and so we agitated, educated, and organized! This tentative agreement is emblematic of months of hard work to demand industry-changing standards.
Read MoreAfter months of negotiations, our Bargaining Committee reached a tentative agreement on June 16! We won because we were organized and prepared to take action to win a fair contract. Some of our contract wins include:
Read MoreYesterday, the union members at Card Kingdom took a steady step towards a new day with a solid contract in place. With a vast majority, the contract was ratified and includes the following:
Read MoreOur Union Bargaining Team met with the Employer for back-to-back sessions on Monday and Tuesday, June 8 and 9.
We’ve reached tentative agreements on:
Paid bereavement leave
Baker premiums for non-Pastry Leads
14-hour rest period between scheduled shifts
Minimum 32 hours for Culinary Lead, Pastry Lead, Assistant Café Manager
Enshrining the practice of paying employees more who are stepping into a higher role temporarily
Hazard pay during a state of emergency
Though we’ve set a strong foundation, there’s more work to be done. The Employer’s proposed wage scale is far from what we deserve. We know that our Cafe Team Members deserve more than minimum wage. While the Employer has come closer to our wage proposals for Shift Leads, Culinary Leads, Pastry Leads, and Assistant Café Managers, their hard work also deserves appropriate compensation.
Read Moreour Bargaining Team recommend voting YES on the MOU, which offers the effected employees things like:
Read MoreOur Bargaining Team is excited to have reached a tentative agreement. Priorities included, better wages, improved language around grace period and attendance.
Read MoreOn June 3, Macy’s publicly announced that our work gave the company its “strongest first-quarter in four years” -- and then executives turned around and offered our member-led Bargaining Team wage proposals that fall well short of a living wage.
Read MoreOn Monday, our Union Bargaining Team met with Grand Central Bakery to provide our counterproposal to their first economic counter. We shared our counters on wages, scheduling, hours, holidays, healthcare, and retirement.
Read MoreOn Thursday, May 21, our member-led Bargaining Team met with the Employer for our second bargaining where we presented our economic proposals. These included:
Read MoreOur Union Bargaining Team met with the Employer last Friday, May 8. We received a full comprehensive economic proposal and were pleasantly surprised to see a lot of movement on core issues of wages, scheduling, and health care.
Read MoreWe look forward to standing together, sharing insights, and building solidarity in pursuit of increasing recruitment and retention, better working conditions, and improved benefits for Macy’s workers across western Washington!
Read MoreCongratulations to all our 2026 union scholarship recipients! Scholarships are reviewed and awarded yearly by our UFCW 3000 Scholarship Committee made up of rank-and-file members from our Executive Board.
Read MoreOn Monday, April 27, our Union Bargaining Team met with the Employer and presented nearly a comprehensive non-economic proposal. These included most contract terms outside of wages, health care, retirement, and scheduling. At the meeting, we told the Employer that moving forward we wanted to plan for a full day session in person where we can pass across proposals. We are working with the Employer to secure future dates.
Read More3 Days of Bargaining!
On April 14, 15, and 16 your Macy’s bargaining committee met with Macy’s management to negotiate a new contract. We made some progress on smaller contract language issues around vacation benefits, personal days, and Washington State’s Paid Family Medical Leave.
Read MoreOur union was prepared to begin bargaining with Downtown Dog Lounge on March 30 and April 2, but both of those first scheduled bargaining sessions were canceled. While this delay was frustrating, our Bargaining Team remains hopeful and focused on the work ahead. We are currently working to reschedule bargaining for the end of April, and we remain committed to fighting for the issues that matter most to us: competitive wages and safe working conditions for both employees and the dogs in our care.
Read MoreOur Union Bargaining Team met with Macy’s Management for the third time on Wednesday, March 25. We made progress on cleaning up throughout the contract and continued to work through Macy’s proposals to:
Read More
On Tuesday, March 3, and Wednesday, March 11, our Union Bargaining Team met with management to begin contract negotiations.
At our first session we were joined by a Union member from the Macy's Budget Clearance House (which is part of the Furniture Galleries contract) as management recently announced that they would be closing at the end of March. Since this will result in the layoff of all of the Budget Clearance House workers, we are working to secure benefits like severance pay and a clear system for transfers to other stores, or for workers who would like to re-apply in the future.
Because of this store closure, our Bargaining Team also spent time focusing on the layoff and transfer language within our Retail and Furniture Galleries contracts. Our layoff proposals included:
Workers who are going to be laid off will be provided a list of all regional job openings and will have preference for positions over any other external hire
Severance pay—which would be calculated based on our years of service here at Macy's—as well as language which would aim to extend our health care coverage for a few months following a layoff
Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, management rejected almost all of these proposals for our Union contract and shared their own set of initial proposals, which included nearly doubling the required hours of work for flex colleagues and placing restrictions on workers transferring within Macy's if you have been employed for less than six months or have discipline within the last six months on file.
We responded to management by rejecting their proposals that flex colleagues' hours should be so drastically increased, and that restricting workers from transferring concerned us because the reason for the transfer might be issues with a manager or coworker—making a bad situation worse by denying the request. Also not all discipline meets the just cause standard in our contracts, so denying a transfer would amount to further unjust consequences.
We also made a proposal regarding members' rights to Union representation during investigatory or fact-finding meetings at work. While the right to representation is a core Union benefit that exists in federal law, we have seen more and more of our coworkers be disciplined without having a fact-finding meeting first, as well as a number of situations involving the asset protection team at Macy's keeping our coworkers past the end of their shifts to question them, without Union Reps present! Our proposal included that management:
Needs to give advance notice if meetings are investigatory
Must notify us that we have the right to have a Union Rep or Steward with us
Schedule meetings so that they won't reasonably extend past the end of our shift
Allow us the opportunity to have a language interpreter with us, so questions can be understood and responded to thoroughly!
Management did not formally respond to this series of proposals by the end of the day on March 11, but we are looking forward to continuing this discussion at our next scheduled bargaining date, March 25, where our Bargaining Team will be presenting management with a few of our wage and commission proposals!
"We're quite early into this process—but we're all excited and determined to win a strong contract!"
— Samantha Wilson, Macy's Bellingham
We are the Union. The members of UFCW 3000 are over 50,000 members working in grocery, retail, health care, meat packing, cannabis, & other industries across Washington state, north-east Oregon, and northern Idaho. UFCW 3000 is a chartered member of UFCW International with over 1.4 million workers in North America.
To build a powerful Union that fights for economic, political and social justice in our workplaces and in our communities.
