Stop the shop

Stop & Shop, with more than 250 grocery stores in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, have begun recruiting scabs to thwart a potential strike by 40,000 workErs or facilitate a management lock-out of them on February 24, when current collective bargaining agreements expire. They have opened 14 recruitment sites across the region to hire “replacement workers.” It is also reported strikebreakers are being offered higher starting wages than the starting wages specified in the UFCW contract.

The United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) union's core disagreement with the company has been over the implementation of the federal Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act, (Obamacare.) Stop & Shop is currently demanding the right to cut off insurance coverage for many part-time workers in early 2014, according to a statement from Rick Charette, chairman of the New England UFCW negotiating committee. The demand is based on the supposition that good health insurance coverage will be available to those workers through state-operated insurance “exchanges” envisioned by Obamacare. More part-time workers are expected to be covered by insurance, but there is little agreement on how it will be paid for. Insurance exchanges may provide a solution, but such exchanges are so new that contract negotiators are unsure how they will work

“We must prepare for the worst,” regional union leaders told rank-and-file members.