Kroger stores in Virginia going on strike

timepasses · Veteran Member

Kroger stores in Virginia going on strike

Date: May 23, 2016

Kroger will give in mid June. Don't worry they pulled that **** here too.

Date: May 23, 2016

Retiree insurance was cut from the contract, we asked for 5 paid sick days and their counter was 1 4 hour personal day in 2019. They cut full time raises from 2 25 cent raises a year to 1. Courtesty clerks got nothing. Part time clerks went to one 20 cent raise a year.the contract was rejected unanimously and the strike was authorized unanimously. Close to 1300 people showed up to the membership meeting in salem. As of right now we are still working. Kroger is renegotiating with the bargaining committee this week.

timepasses · Veteran Member

Anonymous wrote:
Retiree insurance was cut from the contract, we asked for 5 paid sick days and their counter was 1 4 hour personal day in 2019. They cut full time raises from 2 25 cent raises a year to 1. Courtesty clerks got nothing. Part time clerks went to one 20 cent raise a year.the contract was rejected unanimously and the strike was authorized unanimously. Close to 1300 people showed up to the membership meeting in salem. As of right now we are still working. Kroger is renegotiating with the bargaining committee this week.

We're all in the same boat. Did they strip away your health insurance? Rumor has it that is what they're going to try here. Please keep us posted!

Date: May 23, 2016

No still have regular insurance. It was only gonna increase by a dollar every year.

timepasses · Veteran Member

Thanks ! We don't have any sick days except when you're seriously ill and can turn in a doctor's note then there's a sick day Bank. The atmosphere around here has drastically changed in the past year with emphasis being on efficiency and less on employee satisfaction.

Turd Ferguson · Guru

http://www.wdbj7.com/content/news/Union-employees-with-Kroger-sign-temporary-extension-379943991.html

Should be interesting. We've got a new contract coming up too, and pay raises have been priority here.

kroagrr · Guru

Kroger is the largest traditional grocer in the United States and made a record-breaking $2.4 billion in profits last year alone. Last week, Rodney McMullen, the CEO of Kroger, was rewarded a 17 percent pay raise by the companys board of directors. His total compensation jumped from $9.2 million to a staggering $11.2 million. Assuming he works an average number of hours per year, which the federal Office of Personnel Management estimates to be 2,087, McMullen now makes $5,366.55 per hour, or $89.44 per minute.

"Kroger is more successful than ever before. They just gave the CEO a 17% raise. But they told us, the people who make that success possible in the first place, that all they could afford was a quarter." -- Turd's link

Wonder if Rod's pay stub reads, "This paycheck was made possible by hundreds of thousands of associates you're paying seven dollars an hour".

Turd Ferguson · Guru

kroagrr wrote:

Wonder if Rod's pay stub reads, "This paycheck was made possible by hundreds of thousands of associates you're paying seven dollars an hour".

Or "The tears and broken dreams of 100,000 associates fuel your spaceship"

Even though the rumors have already starting trickling through our store about the situation out in VA, the article I posted a link for is already old news. It's from over a week ago, I finally noticed.

Here is an update of sorts from the same news source.

http://www.wdbj7.com/content/news/Kroger-union-reach-tentative-agreement-380808171.html

I guess a tentative agreement was reached, but no details disclosed.

Now, I do have a question for anyone that can answer. When they are speaking of giving full timers, or part timers a raise... be that a quarter, or 45 cents... or even a nickel, are those figures added to the existing pay scale, or are those raises meant for people already topped out in their pay?

What about starting pay for newbies? I didn't see anything on that, even if that doesn't affect me personally, but shouldn't that be a pretty big factor? Kroger is getting killed by just about any other service industry organization when it comes to attracting new employees. The economy has improved greatly since I first started at Kroger, and I just can't see anyone willing to start there for 7 bucks and change when they can go almost anywhere starting over 8 or 9 bucks an hour.

Any thoughts, folks?

AnonymousCutter · Guru

The raises are for the top tier of the full-time employees most likely. I keep telling the Union we need to push harder and get the rates pushed up, but refuse to listen. We have Costco coming into the store offering $12 / hr starting out as a meat/seafood clerk. Any people we get could be scooped up in my market. They heavily underestimate competition along with an oversaturation of stores.

Turd Ferguson · Guru

AnonymousCutter wrote:
The raises are for the top tier of the full-time employees most likely. I keep telling the Union we need to push harder and get the rates pushed up, but refuse to listen. We have Costco coming into the store offering $12 / hr starting out as a meat/seafood clerk. Any people we get could be scooped up in my market. They heavily underestimate competition along with an oversaturation of stores.

It would seem most of our hourly clerks and such are in the $8/hr range, give or take 20 cents, or less. I've heard it often that new contracts rarely offer much incentive for lower tier or new employees. Seems like it would be hard to get them excited about anything if there wasn't something concrete, like a noticeable raise involved.

We have Costco in our area, as well as Publix, and both companies are famous for paying WAAAAYYY more than Kroger does. Not only that, we lose good people to companies outside of our industry. Good for them, I suppose, but I keep shouting from the rooftops who on earth is going to put up with this Kroger BS when they can do so much better? They really are facing a staffing crisis, and no one wants to address it.

kroagrr · Guru

They really are facing a staffing crisis, and no one wants to address it.

No one in Krogrr management, at least. They want to give you 20¢ and Roddy Mac, twelve million.

Welcome, robber barons, to the 21st century . . . which, in Krogrrland, looks kinda like the 19th century, complete with masters, overseers, and a whole bunch of miserable wretches.

Turd Ferguson · Guru

Krogerland really isn't any different than any other corporate entity in America. It's just that it has a certain extra douchey-ness flavor to it that we've all come to know and love.