Puget Sound Allied Grocery Stores Jefferson County & Clallam County Contracts Ratified!
/On December 5, new Jefferson county and Clallam county grocery and meat contracts were ratified!
Read More“They gave us next to nothing, so we are giving them nothing but pickets!” – Emily Hunter
Following the employer’s unacceptable conduct during our previous bargaining session, and the significant distance remaining between the parties, our Union Bargaining Team asked the employer if they would agree to request assistance from the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS). The employer agreed, and an FMCS mediator was available to join us beginning with this session.
The time has come to make your voices heard! We encourage all Radiant Care workers to attend our scheduled vote meeting to review the full details of our new tentative agreement, ask questions, and cast your ballot!
We still have not gotten wages back from management, though we did discuss a few of the economic sections of our contract: namely after receiving one of the aforementioned underwhelming counterproposals regarding a memorandum of understanding for RNs who perform SANE exams. Which the Employer returned the same iteration of the Memorandum of Understanding proposal they brought to us more than one year ago; which only speaks to the examination itself.
As wildfires rip through our region and smoke chokes the air, UFCW 3000 members, families, and communities face evacuations, and loss of homes and livelihoods.
Some workers could experience partial or total work closures creating difficult circumstances surrounding hours, pay, and life stability
As we navigate this emergency, please remember the union and community resources that can help. Also, please review important information below that can help keep you safe and enforce your rights at work.
We are scheduling a vote on whether to accept or reject an LOU (Letter of Understanding) that would change the language of Article 3.4 in our contract. This is regarding the pay rate for working on Saturday and Sunday.
We asked Management about their low wage proposals for 2027 and 2028. They responded that they weren’t focusing on cost-of-living increases and cited that people want to work at this destination employer because it has such a good culture. What do you think?
The rest of the day built off of that momentum and we were able to secure an agreement with the Employer that is fully recommended by our Union Bargaining Team! This offer includes a 10.5% wage increase over the life of the contract as well as increases and expansions to multiple premium pay options! We also were able to secure improvements to our scheduling language, retroactive pay, and compensation for those who are at the top of the scale.
“We had a productive bargaining meeting and reached several tentative agreements, which is an encouraging sign of the progress we’re making together. While we still have work to do on the non-economic items, the discussion remained constructive. We are hopeful that we will continue building on this momentum and make further progress at our next bargaining session.” – Clari Ramos, Nutrition Pharmacist
Yesterday we met with the Employer for the second time. It was their turn to get back to us on our proposals. After their presentation our team worked the rest of the afternoon to respond to their proposals. See the tentative agreements (TAs) we've reached so far (please keep in mind that nothing is final until all members vote and approved the Contract).
Our member-led Bargaining Team met with representatives from First and Goal on Wednesday, July 22, to continue negotiations for our first union contract.
We are set to meet the Employer again on August 6 and 27. You must become part of this process and ensure that your committee gets the strength and stamina to finish this contract negotiation with the best outcome possible regardless of the hurdles that they are facing at the table.
We believe outsourcing our union jobs to robots will erode our unity in the worksite, reduce available hours for those who need them to pay the rent, and threaten the stability of our benefits.
Last Friday we met with the Employer for the first time. The Employer presented their initial set of non-economic proposals. Our Bargaining Committee studied their proposals, formulated counterproposals, and introduced an additional non-economic set of proposals.
On Monday, July 20, following a series of well-attended vote meetings, our MultiCare Capital Medical Center Professionals Bargaining Team is overjoyed to announce that our First Ever Union Contract has been ratified!
Through perseverance, dedication, and solidarity, we have transformed MultiCare Capital Medical Center and are proudly UNION REPRESENTED PROFESSIONALS!
We started our sixth day of union contract negotiations with proposals in our court, which we began with a new cadence that we thought a might help our discussions get across and reach the Employer. While we did reach a few new Tentative Agreements (a three-year duration on our contract, clarity around suggesting new premium-eligible certifications through Labor Management Committee, and the removal of some old language referencing an effective date from three years in the past…), I’m sure you can imagine, these aren’t the topics of discussion which our Bargaining Team and coworkers at SJMC care the most about.
We now have contract that gives us a stronger voice on the job, and we can now stand together with our Union siblings from Spokane in our next bargaining cycle.
Our new Union contract includes several workplace protections, as well as increased wages, premium wages, a union wage scale with wage escalators between each step of the scale, a pension, and stronger safety language! All of those provisions go into effect immediately.
On July 17, workers at Payless Foods in Freeland voted and overwhelmingly ratified our new Grocery and Meat Contracts! Our member led Bargaining Team negotiated a two year contract that gets us back to the table sooner to keep ahead of inflation.
Our Union Bargaining Team met with the Employer again on July 16, to continue negotiations for our next Union contract. Given the Employer’s conduct during recent sessions, we did not expect significant progress. Unfortunately, we were proven right.
On Tuesday and Wednesday July 14th and 15th our Union bargaining committee and FEEST management met again to continue negotiating your first Collective Bargaining Agreement. We made progress on several issues and were able to come to agreements on the following: Immigration; Gender Identity; Performance Review; Whistleblower Policy; Secure Workplace; and No Strike No Lockout. We are awaiting FEEST’s full PTO counter proposals, and a wage counter proposal to move forward with the economics of our bargaining.
On December 5, new Jefferson county and Clallam county grocery and meat contracts were ratified!
Read MoreAfter months of negotiations, leafleting, info-picketing, a 97% strike authorization vote in June, and ratification votes from grocery store workers in many Puget Sound Allied Grocery Stores, our Union Bargaining Team harnessed all that power from thousands of grocery workers to fight and win a fair contract.
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“Participation in our ratification to confirm the agreement between the workers and the County is a crucial piece of union democracy- we appreciate everyone who came to vote!” - Tim Weissman, Environmental Health Specialist
On July 12, members attending the union contract votes at the courthouse and the public works conference room ratified the agreement by an overwhelming majority! Our Bargaining Team thanks everyone who showed up to vote for doing so.
Your bargaining team wants to let you know that after coming to what we believed was a Tentative Agreement on June 7, it appears that we have some details to work out with management and will be scheduling another bargaining session.
We hope to be able to announce next week that these issues have been resolved and let the bargaining unit know when we will be able to hold a ratification vote, and we appreciate your patience!
Our Bargaining Team: Tim Weissman, Quinn Grewell, Susan O’ Brien, Sarah Martin, John Pray.
After three bargaining sessions we have reached a tentative agreement with the county!
This recommended agreement includes:
Significant raises and improvements to the structure of the wage scale.
Conversion to a paid time off system with greater flexibility of use, a larger carry-over of hours year-to-year, and the addition of a catastrophic sick leave bank.
Expansion of longevity bonuses to include workers with 30, 35, 40, and 45 years of service.
Inclusion of grandparents and grandchildren in bereavement leave in the event of the loss of a family member.
Notice of the date and time of the contract ratification vote will be forthcoming shortly.
“We feel this is a damn excellent deal!”
- Tim Weissman, Office of Environmental Health Services
Our Union Bargaining Team met with the Employer on May 16 to present our initial proposals including both economic and non-economic issues. Our initial conversations were productive, and the Employer seemed receptive to some of our ideas.
We look forward to the hard work of securing a collective bargaining agreement that improves pay and working conditions for all.
We will meet with the Employer again on June 6 and 7 with more tentative dates scheduled later in June.
Don’t miss out on important bargaining updates, union benefits, and contract vote updates.
On Friday, November 12, Jefferson County members ratified the new union contract. We are now asking the Employer to process the pay raises and retroactive pay as soon as possible, as well as working on the finalized version of the document to be submitted to the Jefferson County board for final approval.
If you have any questions please contact Ryan Degouveia at (360) 662-1989.
The Bargaining Committee is pleased to announce that a new tentative agreement has been reached with Jefferson County that includes wage increases and other improvements with NO TAKEAWAYS.
UFCW 21 members in good standing are encouraged to attend the meeting, ask questions, and vote on the contract.
Vote on this fully recommended offer at these times and locations on Friday, November 12:
12pm - 1:30pm
Castle Hill Public Health
Main Conference Room
615 Sheridan St, Port Townsend, WA 98368
5pm - 6:30pm
Jefferson County Courthouse
Courtroom
1820 Jefferson St, Port Townsend, WA 98368
Unfortunately, our negotiations with Management today were short, as they did not have “the authority” to go beyond their first proposal offered to us 13 days ago.
Our Bargaining Committee has already offered a counterproposal to the Employer and we didn’t want to bargain against ourselves; so instead, we used the time to draft proposals for the County’s “Telecommuting Policy” and issues with FMLA leaves, which we will be presenting to them at our next bargaining session. When that is depends on when the Employer’s representatives have "the authority" to make us a counter offer beyond what they initially put on the table.
In the meantime, we are preparing to take action so stay tuned for the next bargaining update!
“We all have jobs to do, and it is surprising that the employer came to the table today unprepared to bargain with us. What they gave us could have been delivered in an email!” —Susan O’Brien, Jefferson County Nurse Practitioner
In our first bargaining session on July 21 for the new union contract, our Bargaining Team met with the Employer and proposed:
Improvements to vacation and bereavement leave
New holidays for Juneteenth and Christmas Eve
Extending seniority protections for extended leaves
Improvements to Longevity Pay
Wage increases and wage scale adjustments that recognize the economic realities we all live under as County Employees
While Management did make an initial proposal that was better than previous bargains and shared things in common with our proposals, we are far apart on the amounts, especially when it comes to wages.
“While it was encouraging that we had similar ideas, the wage increases Management proposed were so far below our own, it was hard not to have hard feelings about it.”
—Tim Weissman
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.
Jenny C., a transporter at Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane, knows what it looks like when management hopes a problem will just go away.
Jenny has watched the facility's transport elevators malfunction for more than a year, filing report after report after each incident she witnessed. Supervisors did not appear to take these complaints seriously.
Fresenius workers can see in Trevino’s story what solidarity looks like in action: Checking your check, speaking up when something's wrong, and stepping up to lead when your coworkers need you.