Click above to watch President Traeger’s update or read the full transcription below.
Hi, I’m Jeff Traeger, president of UFCW Local 832, and I’m coming to you today from our training center, where we’re bargaining with Sobeys all day, and I have some extremely good news for you. At about 5:00 this evening, we reached a tentative agreement with your employer.
It’s an agreement that your entire bargaining committee is recommending and an agreement that we’re all very proud of.
Now, over the next couple of weeks, we’re going to be setting up the voting process to ratify this contract, and we’re going to do it the same way that we did the strike vote.
So it’s going to be the option to vote online or by phone. And next week, information will come out to you, in your email or in your mailbox, letting you know exactly what to expect and what the timelines for that voting process will be.
If we don’t have your email address, contact your union representative and get it to us because there’s going to be a lot of communications coming over the next couple of weeks. And it’s a lot quicker and easier if we have your email address.
One of the other things that has happened in the past Safeway members have often told me, “We really like to get the details of the contract in advance of a meeting where we conduct a vote.”
Well, that’s going to happen this time. This time you’re going to get all of the exact details sent out to you well in advance of the vote. And then we are going to have telephone town halls where you can call in and ask questions and other methods of communication so that you can get your questions about this tentative agreement answered.
So please, please, please do everything you can to participate in this process. We’re proud of the deal that we’re bringing you, and we want to make sure that each and every one of you takes the time to read it through carefully and get online or phone in and vote.
Thank you very much.
Jeff Traeger
President UFCW Local 832