Food workers’ union retracts endorsement of Albertsons merger with Kroger. Here’s why

A union that represents over 1,600 Albertsons grocery workers in Idaho says it no longer endorses Kroger’s merger with Albertsons.

Local 555 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union said it’s withdrawing its support after Kroger failed to address major wage discrepancies in the union’s jurisdiction.

The union had offered its approval earlier this year, saying Feb. 19 that its members would likely be better off with the merger than without it, because multiple stores where its members work would be sold to a third company whose leadership had impressed union representatives. The move placed the union at odds with a coalition of other union locals that represent 100,000 Kroger and Albertsons workers in more than a dozen states, including some in North Idaho, the Idaho Statesman previously reported.

That company is C&S Wholesale Grocers, a little-known grocery-supply firm owned by a New Hampshire billionaire that also oversees two retail supermarket chains in the South, Midwest and Northeast. Kroger agreed in September to sell 413 Kroger- and Albertsons-owned stores, including 13 Albertsons stores in Idaho, to C&S to ease federal regulators’ antitrust concerns.

“We were pleased to find not only that they understood and liked the grocery business, but also recognized the importance of quality employees to their ongoing success,” Dan Clay, the president of UFCW Local 555, said in a statement at the time.

But the union, based in Tigard, Oregon, a suburb of Portland, said Thursday that its bargaining committee met with representatives of Kroger, Fred Meyer and QFC on Wednesday and Thursday for its third bargaining session and that the employers failed to address wage discrepancies or show an investment in retirement and health care benefits.

“While our local was the only local to publicly support the merger of Kroger and Albertsons, our local has changed that position as a result of new information as part of the bargaining process discussions over the past two days,” the union said in a news release.

The union also took issue with a news release Kroger issued Thursday that said “Fred Meyer delivers on their promise to accelerate associate wages.”

Miles Eshaia, communications coordinator for UFCW Local 555, called the declaration “misleading at best,” in a statement emailed Friday to the Statesman. He said the companies have a track record of not living up to their obligations and falling short at the bargaining table.

“As a result, we are no longer in support of the Kroger-Albertsons merger for Oregon, Idaho and Washington,” Eshaia said.

UFCW Local 555 formerly represented grocery and other workers just in Oregon and Washington, but it expanded into Idaho in 2021 after the UFCW’s Local 368A in Boise voted to merge into UFCW Local 555. That brought 1,100 workers in southern Idaho, eastern Oregon and western Wyoming into the local, the Northwest Labor Press reported.

Eshaia said by phone that most of the union’s members in Idaho are in Boise, Twin Falls, Pocatello and Burley. The local has about 35,000 members in its jurisdiction.

Kroger Co., a Cincinnati-based national grocery chain, proposed in 2022 to take over Albertsons, the Idaho-based company that Joe Albertson founded 85 years ago with a single supermarket on State Street in Boise. Kroger’s store banners include Fred Meyer, which competes with Albertsons in the Boise area and other Northwest markets.

The retracted endorsement was reported by The Oregonian.

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