Bargaining Update - July 23rd 2024

Dear coworkers,

At today’s bargaining session, the company asked to reduce your breaks to 10 minutes, and for language that would let them get rid of “lifestyle scheduling”, and provide no guaranteed hours for staff.  We have waited over a year for a company proposal on hours of work, only to receive an unacceptable proposal from the company.

After more than a year and a half of fighting for your demands at the bargaining table, the bargaining team has issued an ultimatum to the company:

If substantial progress is not made by the end of our August 7th bargaining session, we will ask the membership to vote to authorize a strike. 

It is not fair to you that the bargaining process has taken this long. In our bargaining session today, we reiterated to the company our commitment to meet as frequently as necessary to accomplish an agreement by the end of the year. 

We need to discuss the stall tactics we have seen from the company. In the last 19 months, the company has:

• Wasted hundreds of person-hours pretending to bargain over health insurance, only to walk away from negotiations and cut your coverage unilaterally and illegally.
• Made unilateral changes to your working conditions, and then asked to spend contract bargaining time talking about it after-the-fact.
• Lied to members by omission in their bargaining updates. In their last bargaining update, they omitted to mention that the company’s package memorandum of understanding (MOU) would allow them to fire members for wearing non-approved political  buttons, and put up new rules on taking home blue slips.
• Waited 18+ months to introduce new non-economic proposals that stall out bargaining.
• Refused non-binding third-party mediation of bargaining sessions.

In January of 2023, NSLU agreed to attempt to resolve non-economic topics first. These topics include union recognition, dispute resolution, job security, working conditions, and many more. We have made a good-faith attempt to resolve these topics. Despite this, New Seasons has still not responded whatsoever to the members’ demands for a living wage, cost-of-living adjustments, or additional P.T.O. 

Voting to strike is a serious decision that you may be asked to make this August. Strikes are painful for both sides. Although our Union has practiced departmental walkouts, and short-term work stoppages as leverage in the past, we have never made the decision to all strike together. The opportunity to exercise our strength and our unity through a strike is critical. It is the main way that we as workers can win the contract we need. 

More information on this possibility will be shared with you in the coming weeks, as our store organizing committees prepare to get out the vote. 

If it comes to calling a strike vote, we will respect your democratic decision making to the end. 

In Solidarity,
Ava Robins and Janet Shek
NSLU Co-Chairs

And the NSLU bargaining team.