Working any job without a union is definitely worse than any job with a union. Millions of workers in this country have no benefits and make just above minimum wage. Many don’t get to take the breaks that are formally guaranteed to them by law. Having a union means having some protection against the everyday abuses on the job that far too many have come to accept as the cost of doing business. Having a union means having a floor that’s harder to fall through. But membership in a union is also about representation. It’s about having an element of democracy within your workplace. Recently, members of Local 876 in Michigan ratified a new contract after a round of negotiations that stands out as a lesson in the need for us all to be more involved at every level. Here a member of Local 876 gives a view into the situation inside the local and offers some ideas for how to improve things.
A New Contract
Our contract was set to expire next year but all throughout the pandemic, the company has been having trouble hiring people at the current contracted wage. Nobody wanted to come work in a hazardous environment for the pay they offered. That was sort of the driving force to get a new contract through early. When the bargaining team brought forward the first tentative agreement it was overwhelmingly rejected. Older workers who had been in the store a while were especially opposed to it because the raise it offered was nothing compared to the decline they’re seeing in their real wages. Kroger has been offering lump sum signing bonuses of a few hundred dollars instead of annual raises that add up and build over time. Anyone dealing with inflation can see why this doesn’t work.
They told us that this was a great contract and that we had better pass it because it was our only shot. But it wasn’t really much different than what already existed for the majority of workers in the shop. There was a wage increase but it costs a lot more money to buy food and gas now and rent is going up constantly. I heard that some folks were only getting like 50 cents more an hour. So, the first tentative agreement was voted down overwhelmingly. It was just a bad deal and everyone could see it. Health care would go up, premiums would go up, we were losing real wages, and we were not advancing at any point in the contract. It was dollars and cents, but didn't really match anything. And it still was under $15 an hour which is what they pay at White Castle down the road without a union.
When they came back with a second tentative agreement our rep told us that if it wasn't accepted, the old contract would just be reinstated without further negotiation. As far as I can tell, they said this just to hurry up and get the contract passed. The company actually sent people from corporate to talk to us. Over the course of the week leading up to the vote we had visits from a few different executives. People understandably felt like the union reps and company executives were working together. There wasn't so much anti-union sentiment in my department but I talked to other people and they would say things like, “Oh, yeah, the union just wants whatever Kroger wants.” I talked to a guy who has been there for 30 years who said that they must have really wanted to pass this because they offered transportation to get people down to the hall for the vote. They never offered transportation before. He said: “They really wanted to get the young people who don't have cars, like the baggers who will vote to get that quick $2.00 raise because they're not going to be here for a while. But we're going to stick around and suffer.”
We were presented with a sheet that had two options: The first was a simple “Yes,” and the second said, “No, I authorize strike activity.” The second time we voted, the ballot only said “Yes,” and “No.” After the first vote I spoke to the rep and said, “So we authorized strike activity, right?” And they said, “Well, it's in the old contract that there's no concerted activity during the life of the contract,” which is to say, no we didn’t actually authorize strike activity because we can’t. When I pressed them about why they worded things this way, basically their answer was that they didn’t know…
The Culture In The Local
The union is just not all that interested in rocking the boat. Part of the problem is there's not a whole lot of participation from the membership, but the leadership also isn’t exactly encouraging it either. It's kind of a cyclical problem and you can see it at every level inside the local. The rep we have today, when he comes, he doesn't really check in on us. He doesn't ask how things are going. He doesn't have any personal relationship with anybody it seems. Oftentimes I have to approach him and I really have to push him. I have to constantly ask for pins that we can wear in our department. It shouldn’t be such a hassle just to be able to show pride in our union. I feel like there’s just no strong connection, no community feeling. The only real communication we get from the Local comes when they want us to vote or when there's some event that's inaccessible because we're all at work.
Maybe they're just used to the status quo. I make relatively good wages for Kroger. I don't make as much as the department heads or the legacy cashiers, but I make more now than I did when I was pushing carts. But the union officers make something like four times as much as I do. It seems like they’re thinking that they’re paid well and the workers seem to be happy enough to not complain much so they leave “well enough” alone. It’s sort of like being a union rep is just a job and that they could just as easily work in the HR department. Then the members don't feel connected to the union. They don’t feel like they can have an influence and these factors reinforce each other. I talk to people all the time about the union. I check our website all the time. I want to know what's going on. I'm not a steward, but I feel like it's my duty. I just feel like people should care about this because if they do, we'll have more strength to get what we actually want. The union just doesn't promote that.
Honestly, I've never been invited to participate in an election. They don't even really tell us when the general membership meetings are. We have to seek them ourselves. The union bulletin board hasn't been updated since I've worked there, and I've been at this shop since last July. It never really seemed to me like they were interested in encouraging a lot of participation from the membership. It was only when the contract was up that they began to talk to people consistently. There’s a serious need for vigilant contract enforcement in our shop. A lot of things are up to us to figure out on our own. One worker I know was told that in an eight hour shift that they would get two 15-minute breaks or else one 30-minute break. The truth is that you get two 15s as well as an optional 30. So they were just straight-up conning this worker out of a break. That’s just one example. A lot of people don’t know what their rights are.
Turning Things Around
In addition to educating people about their contract, there are a lot of smaller direct actions to take to improve things. For example, it was so cold in my department for so long and no one did anything about it. I mean, of course my fellow workers tried. Apparently it happens every winter and they have gloves and hats back there. People would say “we’ve brought it up before and they never do anything,” but I would respond, “what about if we all brought it up?” Eventually we had made enough complaints and riled up enough dissatisfaction with the cold that they sent people to fix it. I know it's small but it was also a win for our department and everyone knew it. And we own that win because it wasn't the union rep and it wasn't Kroger, it was us.
My department is a pretty tight-knit group of people. At any given time, there's three to four people working, and we're all within like 5 feet of each other. We talk a lot and this gives us the benefit of having a relatively close relationship with each other and with our immediate supervisor. We’re also all familiar with our contract and are pretty adamant about enforcement. No one is demanding that we work super fast and super hard all the time. But I know the situation varies across the shop. I try to talk to people outside our department, especially about the working conditions, but also about what they think about working for Kroger in general. And a lot of people just feel this malaise. There are about fifty people that work in this shop and right now only eight of us constitute an active layer in the union.
In terms of the apathy and depression around the whole state of affairs; employment at Kroger and our union just kind of being lackadaisical, it would take some kind of significant involvement from the rank and file to do anything. I don't see the leadership fixing itself because it hasn't shown itself capable. The older workers tell me, it has been pretty bad for something like 20 years; ever since Farmer Jack was bought by Kroger. They had good contracts at Farmer Jack but when Kroger came in they changed it all and the union just accepted a lot of it. It doesn’t help that we live in a “right to work” state and everybody knows that really means “right to work for lower wages.” The union is in rough shape on its own terms and Kroger has high turnover. You're not seeing a lot of people there for years. The older workers have been there for a while and tend to feel a little more is at stake. But a lot of the younger workers see it differently because they're going to be gone before too long. It's hard to meaningfully collaborate with people who don't have a whole lot of investment into the position. Plus with that level of turnover, even people who do feel motivated to do something have to worry about doing too much, too soon, and losing their job.
I think there's a lot of potential for the local. It's really a question of just what exactly is to be done about it. I think that, given enough organizing and enough planning, this core could generate a lot of momentum. I feel like if we could find out a bit more about union meetings and elections and get more people involved, we could eventually put forward candidates who come from the rank and file. I feel like people would get excited if there was a chance that one of us is going to be in that position and fight for us because they know what it's like. I mean someone who didn't study public relations or labor relations but just came from the shop and could speak with the authority of experience. That’s a long term vision but I think that’s exactly what we need. I think we have to be very sober about it though. When we talk about getting more involved, we’re not promising an easy time. We're actually promising a lot of work and struggle. But there's something meaningful in that. There’s a lot of pride in pushing back against even the smaller injustices. You don't just make your conditions better, it also feels good that you did it yourself. It brings pride back into what it means to be a worker with a union card.