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FACTS ABOUT UFCW 588 AND NORTHERN CALIFORNIA’S CONCESSIONARY FOOD INDUSTRY CONTRACTS – 198

by Unknown
Former Local 588 President Jack Loveall and his son, Jacques, have been at the forefront of leading concessionary bargaining with Safeway and Northern California’s other major food employers since the Lovealls took over 588 in 1984. The UFCW 588 impact on bargaining increased when the union merged five local unions in the early 1990’s to expand its membership from 9,500 to 22,000 making it the largest local union in Northern California. No successful labor dispute could be fought if Local 588 was not on board, according to a number of union consultants.
FOOD CONTRACT HISTORY:

Prior to Jack Loveall assuming the presidency of Sacramento Local 588, the Bay Area and Valley Local Unions bargained jointly with the Northern California food employers through the Food Employers Council (FEC) – 1970s- 1980s.

In 1997, Local 588 started negotiating directly with the major supermarket chains without involvement of the other Northern California local unions, setting the contract template for Northern California local unions and all small food employers. The Loveall leadership has undermined the solidarity of the joint bargaining process by breaking from the group and negotiating concessionary agreements that have undermined the wages, health benefits and pension benefits of all Northern California food and drug workers.

There has always been a very close relationship between Safeway and the Loveall leadership, with some observers speculating that there may be some inside dealing and that the Loveall leadership may be getting kickbacks or other illegal benefits from the concessionary deals cut. President Jack Loveall has been referred to by some as Safeway’s White Knight.

History of Concessions:

1986 – Former UFCW International Region 14 Director and International Vice President Jack Loveall represented 588 for the first time as president in these negotiations. Loveall broke from the group in the 11th hour of joint negotiations and accepted a contract for Local 588 UFCW that provided the first bonus-only contract for food workers in Northern California. The Loveall contract was then imposed on the Valley locals and finally the Bay Area local unions accepted the 3-year contract.

1989 – Following the bargaining pattern established in 1986 master food negotiations, Loveall once again cut and ran with a bonus-only contract with a 25-cent hourly wage increase at the end of the 3-year contract. The Bay Area unions continued bargaining but failed to get a strike vote to reject this contract offer and ended up accepting the Loveall contract. Retail food and meat department workers went nearly 6-years without a wage increase under these Loveall contracts!

1992 – Loveall assumed the head of a main bargaining committee of three largest local unions in Northern California (Locals 588, 428 and 101). This contract provided minimum wage improvements and no major benefit setbacks.

1995 – Loveall demanded to be appointed Chief (sole) Negotiator for Northern California union locals. Based on the limited success of the 1992 contract, all locals went a long with this arrangement. Unilaterally, with no authorization or approval of the other Northern California unions bargaining together, Loveall offered the employers a roll-over contract and ended a very successful 9-day strike against Safeway with a controversial give-away deal to Safeway, and two other major market chains either involved in the strike or lock out.

The new 3-year contract provided for a 3-year wage freeze that turned success on the street into failure at the bargaining table. Most workers who voted on this contract were not informed or did not understand that the settlement reached included a wage freeze, since the previous agreement provided modest wage increases to all workers. This contract was responsible for nearly half the seated presidents being voted out of office by 1997.

1997 – In an union election year move, Loveall opened the food contract 7 months early and negotiated a contract with Safeway and Lucky that provided for the largest give away of health and pension trust fund monies in the history of Northern California grocery contract bargaining with over $700 million in suspended employer payments to the health and pension funds. This give-away was not widely known by the workers who voted to accept the deal that ended the wage freeze.

The wage increases ranged from $1.75 per hour for Journeymen food and meat workers over the 4-year deal to 75-cents for the lowest classification of workers. One Trust Fund actuary reported in 2001 that the suspension of hourly benefit payments to the Trust Funds, generated $350 million in cost savings to employers over and beyond the actual cost of the 1997 contract – a fact never known about the Loveall deal when the other local unions accepted the early contract.

Loveall’s early contract sealed his re-election to office. Even though several Northern California local unions openly opposed this contract because of long-term benefit payment suspensions, all local unions were pressured to sign on and ended up ratifying this first-ever 4-year agreement.

2001 – Once again, Local 588 and the Loveall leadership opened contract talks early without the participation of the other 9 UFCW Northern California local unions. The cornerstone of the new contract was the continued suspension of employer contributions to the Pension Trust Fund for the 3-year term of the agreement (a savings of $1.17 per hour per employee).

President Jack Loveall boasted that his son, Jacques and his legal counsel Steve Stemmerman, negotiated the deal in just 3-days. The other Northern California local unions rejected accepting the contract and continued bargaining. After receiving a final offer, that included a $1.25 per hour wage increase for journey food workers, these local unions recommended against this contract that seriously undermined pension reserves; however, they failed to get the required 66 2/3 percent strike vote and end up accepting the same contract.

The strike authorization vote was very close but with the destruction of the World Trade Center Towers figuring greatly in many members’ minds, some decided that it was a bad time to strike

2004 – Bay Area local unions formed a coalition of 8 local unions, known as the Bay Area Coalition (BAC). These local unions mobilized members during the 4-½ -month Southern California supermarket strike and prepared for a similar labor dispute in Northern California when their contract expired in September. Local 588 did not join or participate in the BAC.

When it appeared that the Bay Area was heading toward a strike in January 2005, President Jacques Loveall (appointed president to succeed his father less than a month before the 588 contract settlement was announced) cut a deal with Raley’s and Safeway that had the most far reaching cuts in employer costs ever negotiated.

A new tier (sub-class) was created for new hires (workers hired after the contract ratification) that reduced wages by nearly $2.00 per hour in top classifications, extended the standing 2080-hour progression steps for new hires to 7800 hours (hours required to get to top pay rates in classifications), deep cuts in pensions, deep cuts in health care benefits including extending from 2 months to 7 months the time required for new workers to receive reduced health plan benefits with family (dependent) coverage not available until after 36 months of employment, doubled co-payments for doctor’s visits and prescription drugs, first-ever annual deductibles for all health plans (A,B and C).

Retirees were hit with a $70 per month first-ever premium cost and were dropped from Plan A to B that requires double the co-payments for doctor’s visits and prescription drugs. The employer’s health care contributions were capped for the first time ever, placing the burden on the union and plan participants to pick up any addition health care costs over the term of the agreement.

After much debate and pressure by the International Union, the Loveall agreement was accepted by the BAC and extended to all of Northern California. Once again the leverage needed to avoid important concessions in major grocery industry negotiations was absent due to Local 588 going it alone with the major Northern California supermarket chains.

All this leads many of us to conclude that Jack Loveall, Senior UFCW International Vice President, was the agent of disunity in Northern California that lead to the worst contracts in our history
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Here's copy of a leaflet that some angry wage slaves gave out at 7 Safeways, an Albertson's supermarket, and at a union rally here in San Francisco, in fall 2004.

This was in anticipation of the possiblity of a Northern California-wide supermarket strike at that time...

YOU HAVE TO PLAY HARDBALL TO WIN AGAINST MANAGEMENT TODAY!

An effective strike by Safeway employees will be a major step in reversing attacks by bosses and investors on all working people. A fight against management's attempts to rob you of access to health care will find a sympathetic response from tens of millions of wage earners all over the US. Health care is a major issue for all of us. We are all suffering from the same kinds of hardship at the hands of corporate America

A SAFEWAY STRIKE MUST BE RUN IN A WAY THAT WILL MEAN VICTORY FOR STRIKERS AND DEFEAT FOR MANAGEMENT. A strike that can be won means:

1. A strike run directly by the rank and file -- not by the UFCW apparatus. All major decisions concerning the strike must be made in mass meetings of strikers.
One way to make this happen in a strike is to start holding meetings with your co-workers now. Get together with co-workers in your store. Vis! it other stores and find out what's up with other Safeway employees -- there is still time to meet, discuss, and plan for action.

2. THE STRIKE MUST BE A NATIONWIDE STRIKE. Only a nationwide strike will be costly enough to company shareholders to make them back down on their attacks on Safeway workers.

3. ALL STORES MUST BE SHUT DOWN BY MASS PICKETING -- not by a few symbolic pickets.
Many Safeway shoppers are working people just like you. An aggressive, uncompromizing nationwide strike will find support from tens of millions of working people all over this country. It can be a step toward turning around twenty-five years worth of attacks on the wages and working conditions of all of us.

Only a strike that is very costly for Safeway investors can be won. If you hit them where it hurts, and hit them hard, again and again, they will have no choice but to back down and cave in to your demands.

HOW NOT TO RUN A STRIKE: THE DEFEAT OF THE SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SUPERMARKET STRIKE AT THE HANDS OF THE UFCW.

The UFCW is a union with a long history of betraying its members to management during strikes. The most famous example, before the So Cal supermarket strike, was in the Austin, Minnesota P-9 meatpackers strike of the mid-1980's.

Recent antics of the UFCW leadership in Southern California were a textbook example of a union membership being defeated by a union leadership, a union acting in the interests of management and stock market investors against rank and file union members.

1. The UFCW always acts to isolate striking workers from one another. The strike was isolated to Southern California. Isolation means defeat.

And strikers were isolated from other strikers in the LA area who went on strike over the same issues!

In mid-October 2003, mechanics for the LA County Metropolitan Transportation Authority went out on strike in a dispute over who should pay for rising health insurance costs.
What was the UFCW's response? According to a UFCW striker on a picket line at a Pavillion store (an upscale branch of the Vons chain) on California Street in Pasadena, business agents from the UFCW instructed supermarket strikers to not go to the MTA picket line. The UFCW bureaucrat claimed "it would confuse the issue" in the minds of the public -- and this in a strike that had overwhelming widespread popular support.

The MTA strike was about health care issues that were virtually identical to the ones that had triggered the So Cal supermarket strike.

2. The UFCW was successful in keeping a workforce with little or no experience of strikes or collective action against bosses under control. No mass meetings were held to discuss strategy or the direction of the strike. Union members generally felt excluded from having a voice in how the strike was run. THIS DOESN'T HAVE TO HAPPEN AGAIN.

3. The union made it easy for management to get goods into struck stores. Teamster drivers didn't cross picket lines, but would park their trucks on the street, then allow supermarket managers to drive Teamster trucks up to loading docks. The UFCW didn't even ask the Teamsters to honor UFCW picket lines.

As a "good faith" gesture, three weeks into the strike, on Oct. 31st, the UFCW disbanded picket lines in front of Ralph's supermarkets. Employers immediately announced that they would be sharing profits and losses for the duration of the strike.

Working people living from paycheck to paycheck, and now in the middle of a long-term strike, were forced to match their limited economic resources against corporate supermarket chains -- thanks to the UFCW.

Out of a limitless servility to the bosses, and contempt for the needs of striking workers, at this point the UFCW began giving out leaflets urging shoppers to buy at Ralph's, where UFCW members had been locked out and were on strike. The UFCW ordered picketing to cease at distribution centers. This allowed Teamster drivers who had honored picket lines to go back to making deliveries for the struck supermarket chains.

4. By mid-January, the UFCW cut strike pay from a lousy $240 a week to $100 a week. And union officials who slashed pay and benefits for strikers were themselves bringing home six-figure salaries and fat expense accounts.

According to UFCW reports filed with the US Department of Labor, half of the top UFCW officials drew in upwards of $200,000 in wages, living allowances and expense account perks in 2002. Union President Doug Dority pocketed just under $400,000. Richard Icaza, head of UFCW's LA local 770, took home $278,783.

After a five month long strike, the antics of the rich businessmen who run the UFCW brought union members the same shitty contract offer they had overwhelmingly rejected and struck against in the first place.

Safeway workers here in the Bay Area must be prepared to take the direction of the strike into their own hands -- outside of and against the control of the UFCW.

Independent cluster meetings and member to member communication are essential first steps to creating real rank and file organization and strength.

WHEN YOU FIGHT AGGRESSIVELY IN YOUR OWN INTERESTS, YOU ALSO ACT IN THE INTERESTS OF EVERY OTHER WAGE-EARNER IN THIS SOCIETY.

proletaire2003 [at] yahoo.com

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