About 350 unionized workers from Canada Safeway’s grocery distribution centre and Lucerne ice cream plant in Edmonton are on the picket line for what their union’s president warns may be the long haul.
The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 401 said it served Safeway with strike notice Friday, to which Safeway responded by serving the workers with a lockout notice effective Monday morning.
The company last week had offered a settlement after months of negotiations over issues such as hours and consecutive days of work and language covering the possibility of closures and layoffs.
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Union brass, in a memo last week to employees, had noted “several changes” to the terms and conditions of the offer compared to terms the union had described in June as “substandard.”
Local 401 president Doug O’Halloran, in a memo dated Friday and posted on the union’s website, said he had recommended the workers take the deal, calling it “the best offer we could achieve without going on strike.”
He also warned workers he predicts it will be a long strike which “will put the survival of the Edmonton distribution centre in doubt.”
The distribution centre workers voted 71 per cent to reject the offer, while the ice cream plant staff voted 76 per cent to reject.
“I believe we are making a mistake by going on strike,” O’Halloran’s memo said. “However, you have made a democratic decision which I now support.”
Among its other distribution centres across North America, Safeway operates three others in Western Canada, in Calgary, Vancouver and Winnipeg, plus three in the northwestern U.S. and one in Anchorage.
Among its other food processing facilities, Safeway’s Lucerne wing also operates an ice cream plant in Winnipeg, milk plants in Edmonton, Winnipeg and Burnaby and a cheese plant in Winnipeg.
