I had one of my vendors come in the other day, he told me wal-mart had his company send out a memo saying any vendor who wishes to work in store on thanksgiving and black friday would be paid in wal-mart gift cards, a great way to earn some extra money for the holiday season.
Just thought you would like to know. I myself find this repulsive.
Another one, krogers is exporting meat cutting to non-union workers. They did this with pork years back and now beef is coming in about 2 years in my area. They take the work, export it to a third party company (in this case, the company exists to serve krogers, quite literally, it would not exist at all without krogers), this third party company cuts meat for 1/2 the price, ships it to krogers, then they hire in some low-wage, part time, wage slave at 7.50hr to put it on a shelf, rather than paying people 14-15 to cut and stock it.
Everyone wins but the workers, the union wins cause it collects more dues and krogers wins cause it get the meat there at a lower cost (of course the quality suffers and the workmanship is gone, but who cares when its a dollar on the line).
Just while im ranting, anyone else see the cost of the natural cryo-vaced beef? we buy it in at 1.50 and sell it at 6.99-8.99. Thats insane.
People need to lean on the unions to fight this, if they aren't already. It's hard though, because of prevailing conditions in the industry. The company needs to prove to the courts that not doing so puts them at a competitive disadvantage, and what people don't seem to get these days is that most courts are not union-friendly, and the NLRB is often stymied these days due to the political agendas of a certain party.
unions don't make out like you'd think. They'd rather have one on-board rank-and-file member paying dues on their $15 an hour than 2 that don't give a **** paying dues on their $7.25.
If what you say is true....that Kroger will be exporting their beef meat cutting out and within 2 years be bringing in all beef pre-packs like what they already do for pork, that's it for the trade of the skilled/experienced meat cutters as far as working for that grocery store. I wonder if the company will be ousting Dept Heads and Journeyman meat cutters little by little by any means necessary? Everyone knows that meat cutters are the highest paid union employees in the stores. It will be interesting to hear on this forum from meat cutters if they start having bad experiences at work, management riding their butts. Pre-pack meat is definitely not the same as daily fresh cut meat in the store, you can tell the difference. Also, if their plan is to just oust out these meat cutters and replace them by young clerks in the stores and pay them lower wages and require them to cut meat, they will have a rude awakening. Not just anyone can cut meat, it is a skill, learned and crafted through years of experience. There are a lot of people being placed in the meat depts that honestly have no business being there, just look at the cuts they do or try to do....not a good image to a trained eye. I'm not saying it's their fault, they just are not trained properly. All grocery stores should value their skilled and experienced meat cutters more....the meat depts are one of the biggest profits in the stores! Customers are smart...if they can't find a nice steak cut to their liking, they will go find it somewhere else and while their at it, buy the rest of their groceries somewhere else too.
In my division, all the fresh meat including beef is prepacked/cut- has been for a couple years. Here's the real deal- All the fresh meat with the exception of chicken is imported from Mexico and Central/South America- then sent to packing house in Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, etc. Most meat depts. have one Head Meat Cutter then one backup butcher/journeyman that still know how to cut meat. To answer your question- Is Kroger trying to phase out the older, skilled butchers? You Bet They Are!
Why have 6 top paid meat cutters on the schedule when you can have just two high paid butchers, then 4 part time low paid clerks to fill the cases with all the pre pack fresh meat? Sure there's always going to be some upscale stores in higher income areas where they'll spring for a couple extra bona fide butchers, but this master plan was set into motion a few years back and it will be coming to your division soon- not a matter of If but a matter of when! Some of our competition actually advertised on TV and in their ads that their fresh meat is raised and processed in the U.S. sounds like a good selling point to me..
A lot of the former Kroger meat cutters moved on to work for the competition where you have bona fide butchers that know the difference from a pork chop and a T-bone steak
In Texas they're actually forking out some money into fresh beef. We just re-introduced the apprentice and certified meat cutters in our last contract. In 2015 the certified meat cutters will be making $15 / hr.
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My Views and Opinions do not reflect that of the Kroger company. I'm an indivdual expressing my 1st amendment right.
It should be interesting to see what happens within the next 2 years company wide. The last of the good contracts were back in 2004. I could see them forcing out dept heads or journeyman meatcutters that got hired on or before 2004. Those dept heads make over $19.00 hour and certified journeyman are about $1.00 or so less then a dept head per hour in some states. I could see them trying to replace these guys even if it saved them only a couple dollars an hour per employee by hiring someone else who got hired on under a newer contract. I think the pay scales have gone down in the newer contracts after 2004. So a newer dept head might get around $16.00 per hour, thanks to the good old union not fighting hard enough for better wages for not only for cutters but everyone! Then they save on other things like healthcare and pensions. It adds up.....corporate greed. Costco is still the best paying, around $19 -$20 per hour, then publix and others around $14 -$15 per hour. Like I said before, corporate seems to think anyone can cut meat...WRONG.
If what you say is true....that Kroger will be exporting their beef meat cutting out and within 2 years be bringing in all beef pre-packs like what they already do for pork, that's it for the trade of the skilled/experienced meat cutters as far as working for that grocery store. I wonder if the company will be ousting Dept Heads and Journeyman meat cutters little by little by any means necessary? Everyone knows that meat cutters are the highest paid union employees in the stores. It will be interesting to hear on this forum from meat cutters if they start having bad experiences at work, management riding their butts. Pre-pack meat is definitely not the same as daily fresh cut meat in the store, you can tell the difference. Also, if their plan is to just oust out these meat cutters and replace them by young clerks in the stores and pay them lower wages and require them to cut meat, they will have a rude awakening. Not just anyone can cut meat, it is a skill, learned and crafted through years of experience. There are a lot of people being placed in the meat depts that honestly have no business being there, just look at the cuts they do or try to do....not a good image to a trained eye. I'm not saying it's their fault, they just are not trained properly. All grocery stores should value their skilled and experienced meat cutters more....the meat depts are one of the biggest profits in the stores! Customers are smart...if they can't find a nice steak cut to their liking, they will go find it somewhere else and while their at it, buy the rest of their groceries somewhere else too.
There are alot of rumors about what will happen, im sure the truth is a combination of a little bit of all of them. but basically this is the information im getting, meat cutting is gone aside from special cuts in 2 years, they already stopped training meat cutters period, the dept head is safe and backup safe at the moment, they been chasing journeyman out for a few years now, escheduling being the newest method, it keeps scheduling journeyman for **** shifts, like 12-8, 2-10, 3-11, and it has to be manually changed, then we get yelled at for changing it.
From my understanding, the packaged meat (hotdogs etc) is going to be absorbed into dairy or deli, meat department will have around 2-3 people on average, someone in charge, a stocker, and a counter guy. It's been described to me that we will be "salesmen" and need to start learning "customer first" strategies (IE, lie to get another item into the basket). So basically our meat cutting is contracted out to non union poorly paid workers, our smoked meat section is given to smaller waged employees.
I could see a typical day being head comes in 6-2 or 7-3, does orders, does paperwork, talks to customers, stocker comes in 8-4, counter man comes in 8-4, 2 night guys come in at 4, one on counter, one to restock meat, eventually, they will phase out the stocker and the counter guy will do it alone.
We have a joke in my department, "paper or plastic?"
I also heard in some divisions the backups arnt paid any extra for the extra responsibility or work, some as low as 8.50 a hour to do orders and such. Pretty ****ed up, i got a family. Anyone know if this is true?
