Fearing Union Strike, Stop & Shop Grocery Store Chain Holds Job Fair
By Mary Ann Bragg, Cape Cod Times, Hyannis, Mass.
Feb. 14–HYANNIS — The smell of the Holiday Inn’s chlorinated pool permeated the long, empty hall leading to the Stop & Shop job fair Tuesday.
At 3: 30 p.m. a handful of applicants sat at tables in a wide and largely unoccupied conference room.
The grocery store chain wants to hire temporary clerks and cashiers at $11 to $15 an hour to replace its permanent staff, if a union strike occurs, according to an advertisement this week in the Cape Cod Times.
“I’ve had my application in for some time,” Robin Cardoza, 45, of Mashpee, said outside the hotel.
She has the cashier experience but is unemployed. “It’s good money,” she said.
Negotiations that began in December between the Dutch-owned chain and five locals of the United Food & Commercial Works International Union continue this week. The contract expires at 12:01 a.m. Sunday.
The unions involved represent 43,000 workers in 231 stores spread over Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut.
Members of three of the five United Food and Commercial Workers locals that are negotiating as a group have voted to authorize a strike if no settlement has been reached when the current three-year contract expires.
Local 328 members, which includes 2,500 Cape and Islands workers, will meet Feb. 18 in Cranston, R.I., to take a ratification or strike vote, according to an announcement on the union’s Internet site.
But negotiating sessions between the UFCW and Stop & Shop are scheduled daily through Friday. Both sides on Tuesday held out hope they could avert a walkout.
Negotiations, which began in mid-December, have focused on health care costs and retirement benefits.
“We believe we can still reach an agreement, but we’re way behind the negotiating schedule we’ve kept for past contracts,” said Mark Govoni, a spokesman for UFCW Local 1445.
“We hope we do not need these workers, but we have an obligation to our customers to have contingency plans,” said Faith Weiner, a Stop & Shop spokeswoman, of the possible replacement workers they have been interviewing.
The job fair continues from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. today through Friday and from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at the Holiday Inn on Route 132 in Hyannis.
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Copyright (c) 2007, Cape Cod Times, Hyannis, Mass.
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