Southern California Supermarket Workers Vote To Authorize Strike

Supermarket workers at Albertsons, Vons and Ralphs stores voted today (June 26) to give union leaders the authority to call a strike.

A tally of the votes was not immediately available.

The decision itself does not trigger a strike, but gives the union the authority to call a strike any time in the future.

In a June 25 interview with FreightWaves, Todd Walters, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 135, said lagging pay and funding changes to healthcare plans were among the union's list of grievances. He also accused the retail chains of delaying negotiations on a new contract.

Albertsons' spokesperson Melissa Hill told FreightWaves that union leaders will meet again for negotiations from July 10 to 12.

As FreightWaves reported here, a strike would almost certainly benefit non-union grocery operations like Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN and Walmart Inc WMT. 

In addition to disrupting brick-and-mortar operations at the affected retailers, online grocery delivery services like Instacart would likely be affected.

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