Urgent and important poll for Safeway members
As the vote on the Company offer draws closer, your union is working to ensure that Safeway workers are able to cast their ballots and meet their needs free from undue influence.
We again warn Safeway to mind their own business and let the vote play out without undue Company influence. The Company puts the outcome of the vote at risk if members feel that there was undue coercion and that they could not truly and freely express their wishes in the voting process.
Over the past weeks and months, the Company has engaged in a variety of intimidating, coercive, and even manipulative actions that many argue have created a threatening environment of fear and bullying for Safeway workers.
Click here to take an urgent and important union survey.
In the face of these challenges, your union has pushed back, bringing the story of Safeway workers to the public via a province-wide television advertising campaign. Indeed, 95% of Safeway workers asked us to do just that during a special telephone town hall last month.
Response to the advertising campaign has been overwhelming. Thousands of customers have expressed their support for Safeway workers and the fight for fair checkout to get rid of grocery greed.
But frustration around grocery greed pre-dates your union’s advertising campaign.
A study from early 2023, before your union ran any advertising of any kind on this topic, identified that 83% of Canadians believed food grocers and producers were “using inflation as an excuse to price gouge.”
Click here to take an urgent and important union survey.
Sobeys/Safeway might not like your union’s efforts to talk to the public about their behavour and the challenges you face. But this is a discussion that is already happening all across the country.
There is a strong and growing movement to vote no to the Company offer. Many Safeway workers simply do not believe that the Company offer meets their needs.
Click here to take an urgent and important union survey.
If a strong majority of Safeway workers vote no and reject the offer, there is hope that Safeway will listen and consider their position.
But let’s be clear, no one wants to continue fighting with the Company on these issues. Safeway workers only want a reasonable solution.
Unfortunately, voting yes to the Company offer does not create such a reasonable solution.
Voting yes will lock you into a four-year contract during uncertain times that economists say will not maintain the standard of living you had even in 2020. There will not be the opportunity to engage in further negotiations and you will not have the option of amending your contract over the next four years if accepted.
If you watch the news, you will know that our economy is a complete uncertainty and question mark for the coming years.
Further, voting yes means that the Company will ask your union to withdraw a series of legal actions that we have brought forward to address the Company’s improper and intimidating behaviour.
Many see voting yes as nothing more than an act of surrender at a time when workers are best poised to fight for the gains they so desperately need.
As you prepare to vote on the Company offer, please take the following anonymous survey to let us know where you stand on these important issues. It is important that we anticipate the outcome so we can develop strategies and anticipate what our next move should be.
Click here to take an urgent and important union survey.
Posted on: January 14,2025