Unfair Labor Practice Strikes to Begin at Some Colorado Safeway/Albertsons Locations on Sunday
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 14, 2025
CONTACT: Pam Aguado
paguado@ufcw7.com | 303-425-0897 ext. 399
Unfair Labor Practice Strikes to Begin at Some Colorado Safeway/Albertsons Locations on Sunday
DENVER, CO. – After a 72-hour countdown clock runs out at midnight on Saturday night, UFCW Local 7 will begin an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) Strike in a number of Safeway/Albertsons locations on Sunday. Unlike the King Soopers strike in February that started at 77 stores on the first day of the strike, the ULP strikes starting on Sunday will be more limited at first and will expand as the strike continues. On Sunday, the ULP strikes will be limited to Safeway/Albertsons locations in just four cities. This will allow time the public to understand the problems these workers are facing, allow Safeway/Albertsons time to understand the seriousness of the workers’ resolve, and at the same time reduce the hardship on shoppers and workers alike that result from a wide-spread strike on shoppers and workers alike. These limited locations at the outset of the strike include retail grocery stores in:
Estes Park, Colorado
Fountain, Colorado
Pueblo, Pueblo
These retail locations will be in addition to a distribution center in Denver, which will also face pickets.
“It’s too bad that things have come to this point with Safeway/Albertsons, but the ongoing unfair labor practices, including bad faith bargaining, as well as surveilling and threatening workers, have given us no choice but to strike", said Monique Trujillo, a Safeway worker from Fountain, Colorado.
It had been hoped that the recent strike authorization votes that concluded last week would have led to a breakthrough in negotiations with Safeway/Albertsons, but that did not happen. Negotiations on Wednesday June 11 did not achieve a hoped-for agreement and the union issued a required 72-hour notice on Wednesday night to begin a countdown to the termination of the contract extension agreement. That clock runs down to zero this Saturday night and strikes will begin on Sunday June 18th.
For over seven months, UFCW Local 7 members who work at Safeway Albertsons across Colorado have been in contract negotiations with their employer to bargain a new contract. The contract’s original expiration was in January. A region-wide Unfair Labor Practice strike at Kroger-owned King Soopers stores in metro Denver and Pueblo also took place in February. At that time and since, there was an extension agreement in place with Safeway/Albertsons, which meant there would be no strike at those stores. Early on in negotiations Safeway/Albertsons had shown signs of wanting to reach an agreement with workers, but instead the company has linked arms with King Soopers and City Market in seeking concessions from workers and retirees on fixed incomes. Finally, after patience wore out from ongoing unfair labor practices, short-staffed stores, and frozen wages, workers at Safeway Albertsons took their strike votes in late May and early June and the Unfair Labor Practice strike was authorized by 99%.
“I wish that Safeway/Albertsons had taken negotiations more seriously, obeyed the law, and respected the workers who make the stores run, but wishing doesn’t make it so,” said Kim Cordova, President of UFCW 7. “We are fighting for better stores so that shoppers and workers alike can have a better experience. Instead of working with the union, Safeway/Albertsons has instead put its faith in its supposed competitor King Soopers and City Market in an attempt to drive down healthcare and pension benefits for active workers and retirees alike.”
Additional Update: In addition to the targeted ULP strikes beginning on Sunday, UFCW Local 7 members at Safeway/Albertsons stores in additional cities which had not voted in the last round of strike authorization votes will be holding their own votes this coming week. These areas include Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Greeley, Loveland, and Longmont.
Background:
Workers know that the chronic understaffing has not only created suffering for workers unable to feed their families but also has a daily impact on the lives of customers. From long lines and empty shelves to causing deceptive product pricing the impact of understaffing is being felt in grocery stores across America.
Here in Colorado, Safeway/Albertsons workers in Metro Denver, Boulder, Broomfield, Castle Rock, Conifer, Estes Park, Evergreen, Fountain, Grand Junction, Idaho Springs, Parker, Pueblo, Salida, Steamboat Springs, and Vail all voted, in late May and early June, to authorize an unfair labor practice strike by 99%.
UFCW Local 7 members at Kroger-owned King Soopers held a 10-day ULP strike back in February around Colorado. The hope at the time was that Safeway/Albertsons would heed the lesson of King Soopers and come to negotiations with proposals that the workers could agree to. For months they did not, and the 99% strike votes show how clearly, they have missed the mark. The Company knows they just need to do the right thing, stop breaking the law with bad-faith bargaining, and provide workers and our shoppers with a contract that will allow the stores to be run well.
As of late Wednesday, June 11, tens of thousands of Kroger and Albertsons union grocery store workers in Southern California had also announced that they too had just voted to authorize strikes. This was after UFCW 3000 members in western Washington State had voted to authorize strikes in that region as well in the first week of June.
Kroger and Albertsons are the two largest traditional grocery store chains in America, employing roughly 700,000 Americans between them. Both companies have enjoyed record profits since the onset of the pandemic in 2020 and are sending billions of dollars to Wall Street investors instead of investing in the stores, on lower prices for consumers, and on improving the lives of their respective workforces.
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Local 7, the largest private-sector Union in Colorado, is affiliated with United Food and Commercial Workers International Union which represents over 1.3 million workers in the United States and Canada and is one of the largest private-sector Unions in North America. UFCW members work in a wide range of industries, including retail food, food processing, agriculture, retail sales, and health care.