I am writing to you because I am concerned about the direction that Stop & Shop is choosing as it begins negotiations with its union workforce.
 

To begin, allow me to tell you who I am. I am your parttime employee; I am your fulltime employee; I am the college student trying to pay tuition; I am the single mother of two, working nights while my children sleep; I am your department manager, who has weathered many contract negotiations that have become increasingly demeaning; I am your new employee, with my first job, deciding my future.

We are your loyal employees; we are also your faithful customers.

 

Here is our story:

 

OK, so three years have gone by. Those last negotiations were brutal, all the back-and-forth fighting, the name-calling. I can’t believe how the company pitted its management team against us, tried to bully us, brought in an outside operative who made us feel insignificant – a person whose sole purpose was to break our union and ram a contract through that insulted our worth, belittled our achievements, and basically told us where we could go if we didn’t like it. And we didn’t like it! After all, wasn’t Stop & Shop the most profitable of Royal Ahold’s holdings? Weren’t we on the cutting edge of the new technologies? Hadn’t Stop & Shop been able to rescue its parent company from financial ruin (when another of its holdings had brought it to the brink by overstating its earnings)? And didn’t we – as loyal employees – deserve some of that credit?

 

But there we were, being offered a contract that ended our pension program, froze our wages, and asked us to pay upwards of $100 per week for our health insurance – a take-it-or-leave-it offer that did nothing but TAKE and left us no choice but to fight back.

 

Our union told us to stand strong, stand united, and be ready to strike. None of us thought it would come to that; after all, this was the company we had worked so hard to make NUMBER ONE in New England. (For long-termers: If you cut us, we bled not only red but also green.) We were the backbone of this company – surely they would bargain with us fairly and decently.

 

But as the rhetoric grew more hostile, the company took out ads offering parttime employees $11/hour and fulltime employees $14/hour to start, a slap in the face to existing employees who were working for $6.80/hour and to new fulltime employees who had worked parttime for the last 3 years and had now been promoted to fulltime, with $1/hour more to make $9/hour. As tensions grew, the company refused to negotiate and the contract expired.

 

We were all afraid, but we put our trust in our union and made it clear that to achieve a contract that left our dignity intact, we would strike. If the intent of Royal Ahold and their paid operative was to break our union, they had grossly miscalculated. We DID stand strong, we DID stand united, and the union soon emerged stronger than ever. Perhaps now we would be treated with a little more respect.

 

Over the course of this last contract, many things have changed. Stop & Shop, now partnered with its sister, Giant, has gone from “red and green” to “purple and yellow”. Our once iconic flashing traffic signal has morphed into “colorful slices”, representing our abundant product line and ever-changing adaptability in the marketplace. We have gone through VIP pricing, the advent of Delivision and Easy Scan, enhanced unit tag updates (twice), new uniforms, a bigger commitment to self-scan, “hassle-free” returns, brand name recognition overhauls, and signage and decor changes (again, twice). With next day delivery, we provide our customers with fresher, longer-lasting product. The new shrink tracker allows us to zero in on known loss more effectively, reducing our loss and increasing the company’s profit margin.

 

Our mission statement is more defined:

“We pledge to make a difference in the lives of our customers everyday,

with great food, low prices, and friendly, helpful service.”

 

We have embraced these changes wholeheartedly, yet through all of these changes there have always been two true constants: our commitment to the overall shopping experience of our loyal customers, and the success and growth of our company.

 

And now the contract negotiations have begun anew. We entered the final months of our existing contract confidently, and optimistic that the bitter taste of the battle from three years ago would be only a fading memory. Yes, we are in the midst of a recession that has claimed countless businesses and led to double-digit unemployment, but people still need to eat, and Stop & Shop had positioned itself well to provide for those needs.

 

We have done our part as well. The changes that Stop & Shop proposed and we enacted truly seem to be making a difference. While a major competitor, Shaw’s Supermarkets, has been in a financial freefall for the past several years, Stop & Shop has flourished and continues to hold onto its marketshare.

 

Make no mistake: The newly merged Stop & Shop/Giant continues to be the crown jewel of Royal Ahold. P and L reports, shrink trackers, and weekly sales analyses all tell a compelling story of a successful company, with its loyal employees as the main characters. Why shouldn’t we be optimistic? We have done everything that was asked of us.

 

And yet, even as our store management is telling us not to worry, that this is going to be an easy contract negotiation, the lines are being drawn, and Royal Ahold has drawn first blood. Once again, several ads have appeared throughout our market region, this year offering $12/hour for parttime and $15/hour for fulltime. (The company does seem to recognize that even scabs are expecting a cost-of-living increase!) And, once again, a paid operative has been brought in to negotiate on behalf of the company.

 

These tactics are designed to frighten and bully us, in the hopes that we will all run and hide and make no waves. Yet once again, the company has grossly miscalculated. These tactics of division only divide the company from its workforce.

 

As union members, we know that our strength is in our unity and we will not be broken. A strike is a losing option for both sides, and we hope it does not have to come to that.

 

But if we must strike, we are ready.