Expect to encounter Teamsters Union members this weekend at your local Fred Meyer or QFC stores. They’ll be handing out leaflets – not striking – to let customers of the stores learn their side of an unresolved dispute over medical insurance costs.
The Teamsters work at a Puyallup regional warehouse. Their union represents 362 workers there who load and unload goods, stock shelves and do other tasks at the warehouse that serves Washington, Alaska and Idaho Fred Meyer and QFC stores.
Both Fred Meyer and QFC, based in the Northwest, are owned by Cincinnati’s Kroger Co.
Those warehouse workers have been without a contract since Aug. 15. Negotiations are hung up, the union says, over the company’s medical plan.
That plan’s cost to workers more than doubled over the duration of the previous contract, said Teamsters local spokesman Paul Zilly.
“Our deductibles, our share of the costs and co-pays have all gone up,” he said Friday. Health care contracts signed by the union at other local grocers, including Safeway and SuperValu, aren’t as expensive to workers as Kroger’s, he said.
Kroger spokespersons did not return phone calls seeking comment Friday.
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