Portland and SW Washington strike discussion

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Re: Portland and SW Washington strike discussion

Post by storewanderer »

HCal wrote: December 16th, 2021, 9:41 pm

Improving pay and benefits is the best recruitment.

When Walmart, Trader Joe's, etc., are offering higher starting wages, it is a problem for Kroger. Recruiting efforts aren't going to fix that.
This is a problem for a lot of the unionized grocers, not specific to Kroger. From what I am hearing, various unionized grocers are hiding behind union wage scales as to why they can only start a courtesy clerk or a deli clerk at some wage around $10/hr. But it is not this way at Smiths in Reno (entire store is non union except the meat department which is union); Smiths has been advertising their "wage ranges" which primarily go low teens to high teens for positions and they are quite hard up to get employees like other retailers are, basically they can and do go up closer to the top of the "wage range" if the employee has experience but it is at the discretion of whoever is doing the hiring.

I think what it is going to come to is a lot of these stores will need to learn to do "more with less." Service departments that don't really sell much dollars of product like a bakery or a seafood counter probably need to be seriously reconsidered in a lot of locations. For some chains that produce heaps of literal crap in the bakery (looking at those cookies at NorCal Safeway...) that are terrible quality and do not sell well even when on promotion for 70% off the regular price... again... quit burning labor on this stuff. The amount of time spent on production that ends up thrown out (think french bread and fried chicken) in these perimeter departments needs to be seriously reconsidered. Many chain grocers should study closely the Publix deli operation and replicate it- that is a low labor operation yet customers rave about it. What is missing at Publix- those employee served pasta salads/potato salads, it is all prepack only. No dishes to clean, utensils, etc.
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Re: Portland and SW Washington strike discussion

Post by HCal »

Yes, I think that ultimately, the supermarkets are going to reduce staffing rather than raise wages. Service departments will be eliminated or cut back, cashiers will be replaced with self-bagging or even self-checkout, and shelves will soon be replaced with stacks of boxes. Kroger will look like Aldi :shock:

That's probably an exaggeration, but they definitely are moving in that direction. Maybe the union contract requires certain staffing levels in some departments or overall, so they might have to renegotiate that. They will also have to look at how this impacts sales, because a bakery or deli may not sell a lot, but it might attract customers who then do the rest of their shopping in the store.
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Re: Portland and SW Washington strike discussion

Post by Romr123 »

Meijer is a good long way on that path---all their "commodity" and "deluxe" salads are prepack only in 1# and 3# containers...only a few $6-$7/lb salads are in the deli case. Publix was prepacked produce for many years (beyond any other large grocer) too which primed people to accept that in the deli.
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Re: Portland and SW Washington strike discussion

Post by Super S »

I will continue to shop at the stores that offer the best value for me with the fewest gimmicks. Right now that store is WinCo, with Walmart a runner-up. It is hard for me to support the union grocers when they have pricing structures that require you to jump through hoops to get fair prices. Fred Meyer has been slipping for a while now, and this strike only reinforces that.

Washington does have a high minimum wage at $13.69 an hour, which bumps up to $14.49 an hour on January 1st. The unfortunate reality is that some stores are going to be cutting back in order to try to remain profitable, and some price increases will be taking place. This could be a factor in the strike.
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Re: Portland and SW Washington strike discussion

Post by veteran+ »

storewanderer wrote: December 16th, 2021, 11:15 pm
HCal wrote: December 16th, 2021, 9:41 pm

Improving pay and benefits is the best recruitment.

When Walmart, Trader Joe's, etc., are offering higher starting wages, it is a problem for Kroger. Recruiting efforts aren't going to fix that.
This is a problem for a lot of the unionized grocers, not specific to Kroger. From what I am hearing, various unionized grocers are hiding behind union wage scales as to why they can only start a courtesy clerk or a deli clerk at some wage around $10/hr. But it is not this way at Smiths in Reno (entire store is non union except the meat department which is union); Smiths has been advertising their "wage ranges" which primarily go low teens to high teens for positions and they are quite hard up to get employees like other retailers are, basically they can and do go up closer to the top of the "wage range" if the employee has experience but it is at the discretion of whoever is doing the hiring.

I think what it is going to come to is a lot of these stores will need to learn to do "more with less." Service departments that don't really sell much dollars of product like a bakery or a seafood counter probably need to be seriously reconsidered in a lot of locations. For some chains that produce heaps of literal crap in the bakery (looking at those cookies at NorCal Safeway...) that are terrible quality and do not sell well even when on promotion for 70% off the regular price... again... quit burning labor on this stuff. The amount of time spent on production that ends up thrown out (think french bread and fried chicken) in these perimeter departments needs to be seriously reconsidered. Many chain grocers should study closely the Publix deli operation and replicate it- that is a low labor operation yet customers rave about it. What is missing at Publix- those employee served pasta salads/potato salads, it is all prepack only. No dishes to clean, utensils, etc.
Interesting!

I do not remember anyone raving about Publix delis and bakeries (in the past as an employee and shopper).

Currently, all of my family is in Florida (east & west coast).................none of them rave about Publix fresh departments (Deli, Bakery, et al).

:?:
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Re: Portland and SW Washington strike discussion

Post by veteran+ »

Super S wrote: December 17th, 2021, 6:29 am I will continue to shop at the stores that offer the best value for me with the fewest gimmicks. Right now that store is WinCo, with Walmart a runner-up. It is hard for me to support the union grocers when they have pricing structures that require you to jump through hoops to get fair prices. Fred Meyer has been slipping for a while now, and this strike only reinforces that.

Washington does have a high minimum wage at $13.69 an hour, which bumps up to $14.49 an hour on January 1st. The unfortunate reality is that some stores are going to be cutting back in order to try to remain profitable, and some price increases will be taking place. This could be a factor in the strike.
Yep, so the executive suite and the shareholders can continue to be rich........................lol.

Let's always blame those unions and California and sometimes New York. Same ole same ole............................. :lol: ;)
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Re: Portland and SW Washington strike discussion

Post by Super S »

Apparently the Longview Fred Meyer is not part of the strike:

https://tdn.com/news/local/business/lon ... -top-story

And, the strike has an end date:

https://www.kgw.com/article/news/local/ ... 336854066b

I am not sure if anything will be accomplished when a strike has a set end date. Kroger/Fred Meyer could take note of that and do absolutely nothing, knowing that the strike will end.
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Re: Portland and SW Washington strike discussion

Post by storewanderer »

veteran+ wrote: December 17th, 2021, 7:37 am
Yep, so the executive suite and the shareholders can continue to be rich........................lol.

Let's always blame those unions and California and sometimes New York. Same ole same ole............................. :lol: ;)
Or try to shop at independent or smaller chain stores at least whenever they can meet expectations... not even possible in a lot of US regions.

But the spoiler is those often pay lower scale wages than the corporate chains that are unionized and have shareholders...
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Re: Portland and SW Washington strike discussion

Post by pseudo3d »

veteran+ wrote: December 17th, 2021, 7:37 am
Super S wrote: December 17th, 2021, 6:29 am I will continue to shop at the stores that offer the best value for me with the fewest gimmicks. Right now that store is WinCo, with Walmart a runner-up. It is hard for me to support the union grocers when they have pricing structures that require you to jump through hoops to get fair prices. Fred Meyer has been slipping for a while now, and this strike only reinforces that.

Washington does have a high minimum wage at $13.69 an hour, which bumps up to $14.49 an hour on January 1st. The unfortunate reality is that some stores are going to be cutting back in order to try to remain profitable, and some price increases will be taking place. This could be a factor in the strike.
Yep, so the executive suite and the shareholders can continue to be rich........................lol.

Let's always blame those unions and California and sometimes New York. Same ole same ole............................. :lol: ;)

I'm sure there's plenty of blame to go around. Obviously California's shoplifting rules and lack of persecution in many areas are harmful to retailers (in general), and it's hard not to look at a $6.4 million raise (as Kroger's CEO got last year) and wonder why you get paid so little. I did do some research, though, and found that if the CEO did not give himself a $6.4 million raise and instead distributed it to employees, everyone would get an annual bonus of...about $13.76. Obviously turning that into raising the wage for everyone is going to be functionally nothing.
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Re: Portland and SW Washington strike discussion

Post by Brian Lutz »

In the end, the strike only lasted one day before a tentative agreement was reached:

https://komonews.com/news/local/union-c ... -meyer-qfc
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