King Soopers hired temp workers to keep stores open during strike; pharmacies will close Sundays

As day one of a planned two-week walkout began, about a dozen King Soopers employees were up before dawn on Thursday, pacing in front of their store in Centennial. Some walked the perimeter on the sidewalks as cars passed by. All carried white signs with red lettering asking customers to not patronize their employer.

Their union representative with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 forbade them to speak to a reporter, even as one employee questioned why not? Why aren’t they allowed to tell the people why they are outside the store instead of inside?

At a Safeway parking lot across from a King Soopers on Thursday, union officials held a news conference and said the workers at the two Pueblo stores would join the strike starting Friday. Local 7 President Kim Cordova said she spoke for the workers, who feared repercussions by the employer. Intimidation is part of the union’s multiple unfair labor practice claims against the Kroger-owned chain. 

“King Soopers has some big problems. I mean when you have 96 to 100% of the workers vote to strike, there’s real issues,” Cordova said. “And here we are for the second time in back-to-back bargaining cycles. Here we are with another unfair labor practice dispute against King Soopers.”

More than 10,000 King Soopers employees in the Front Range are involved, which is a few thousand more than three years ago when King Soopers walked out in January 2022. More contracts have expired. They’re protesting unfair labor practices, which allege surveilling and disrupting discussions between workers and union reps. A “last best and final offer” from the company was rejected in mid-January.

Not all union members walked out on day one. Workers in Colorado Springs voted last Friday to authorize a strike and could join the strike in the coming days, union officials said. 

Here’s a searchable list of impacted stores:

Grocer preps for strike

There are 77 Denver-area stores involved in Thursday’s work stoppage. Because of that, King Soopers hired temporary workers to keep the stores open, spokesperson Jessica Trowbridge said Wednesday. 

“We have an obligation to the community to make sure they have access to fresh and affordable food and pharmacy services, so we’ve gone ahead and hired temporary staff to come and help us serve the community at this time,” Trowbridge said.

All stores will remain open, though locations impacted by the strike will operate on limited hours. Stores will open between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m, with pharmacies open 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. during the week. On Saturdays, pharmacy hours will be 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., closing from 1 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. for lunch. Pharmacies will be closed on Sundays.

All other stores in the state, including City Markets, will stick with their normal hours. 

Other King Soopers stores remain open

Not all King Soopers in metro Denver are unionized. There are nonunion stores in Brighton, Castle Rock, Erie and Firestone. There are also two Thornton locations — at 13700 Colorado Blvd. and 13525 Quebec St. — that aren’t part of the strike. Other nonunion stores farther out include Bennett, Conifer and Windsor. 

Union stores outside of Denver remain open, though they could join the strike at a later date. . Besides Colorado Springs workers who are ready to join the strike, others could take a strike vote soon. Labor contracts in Fort Collins, Greeley, Longmont and Loveland expire Feb. 15.

Local 7 also represents workers at four Western Slope City Markets, including two in Grand Junction, one in Fruita and one in Clifton. No strike vote has been announced yet. 

Unproductive negotiations, heated accusations

Negotiations began in October on the new contract, which expired Jan. 5, and stopped indefinitely on Jan. 16. No further meetings were scheduled. 

In unfair labor practice claims filed with the National Labor Relations Board, the union said King Soopers was “illegally threatening members with discipline” for wearing union clothing or union buttons, surveilling workers in discussions with union staff and “gutting $8 million in retiree health benefits for wage increases for active workers.” 

To get the union back to the bargaining table, Cordova said, “We need the company to engage in good and fair bargaining, and they need to resolve the unfair labor practices. They have to provide information that we need around sales.”

King Soopers pushed back on all the allegations. In a statement, the company said it responded to all the union’s requests, and even “dedicated six hours to answering every question raised,” during a one negotiation session. The company has “acted in full compliance with both the law and collective bargaining agreement obligations.”

It filed its own unfair labor practice claims against the union for causing disruptions, such as mentioning a strike on Dec. 17, and rejecting company offers without providing their own proposal for the workers.

The company had hoped to avoid a strike, like the one three years ago. Earlier this week, King Soopers President Joe Kelley asked Local 7 to “reconsider their approach and prioritize the best interests of our associates, their members and the communities they serve.”

King Soopers has publicly shared its offer to workers and urged employees to look and vote on the proposed contract, instead of voting on unfair labor practices.

King Soopers offered raises to boost store clerks’ hourly wage by $4.50 over four years, with top clerks earning above $27 an hour by 2028. Adding in health care and pension benefits, that would be $29.48 an hour. The current wage is $22.68, the company said.

The union’s sticking points

While making sure grocery workers can make a livable wage is a big concern, Cordova said the top concern is inadequate staffing, and that impacts consumers.

“Our fight over understaffing is real. Every customer sees that they’re waiting in long lines. They’re seeing empty shelves. And there’s not a supply chain issue here. All the product is in the back room. There’s just nobody there (to restock),” Cordova said. “They don’t have enough staff in the stores to properly change the price tags or prices in the system. So many customers’ experience (is) the price they’re paying is higher than what’s advertised. And that’s a big issue when people around the country are already upset about the high cost of groceries.”

Reyna Carpenter, the seafood manager at a King Soopers in Pueblo, said she joined the company a decade ago when there were four people working a shift in her department at a time. Now, there’s two. And sometimes she gets pulled over to help with the meat department. 

If one of the shift workers is tagging items or restocking, that means there’s only one employee helping customers. And that’s what’s happening storewide, she said. When check out lines get longer, cashiers abandon the other chores. That means store shelves aren’t getting restocked or properly tagged with the new pricing for the week. Or there’s no shopping carts, so another staffer has to run out and gather them up in the parking lot. 

“On ad days, it’s ridiculous,” Carpenter said. “You have to rearrange everything. … That takes time. We used to have people that came in and worked with us. We had more staffing in the morning and throughout the afternoon.”  

Kroger owns 118 King Soopers and 32 City Market stores in Colorado. Not all are unionized.

This is a developing story and will be updated.