See a transcription of the video update below.
Hi, I’m Jeff Traeger, president of UFCW Local 832. And I will be leading the round of bargaining with your employer, Loblaw, that represents our members working at Superstore across the province and at No Frills stores and the last remaining Extra Foods store in Swan River.
So we finally started bargaining after a long delay in getting to the table and we were at the bargaining table yesterday, the 19th of June and today. And actually had a pretty productive start to the process, presented proposals from both parties, and your employer has a large set of proposals as well that they brought to this round of bargaining.
We were actually able to deal with some of the more simple ones. As is normal in bargaining, we set aside the monetary proposal so things like wages, premiums, benefits, and those types of things aren’t going to get dealt with until later on in the process.
We’ve got a couple of days scheduled in three weeks. We’ve got another week in August, and we’ve got most of the month of September scheduled. So I anticipate it will be in September when we really get into the meat of bargaining those monetary items.
We’re not the only province that has bargaining going on right now. Saskatchewan is also bargaining their agreement, and their secretary, Treasurer Marilyn McFarland, was at the table with us here in Winnipeg for our first two days of bargaining as a show of solidarity. Some of our bargaining committee members will be attending in Saskatoon when they have their round of bargaining again.
As usual, when it comes to bargaining, if you have any questions or you want to get an update, the best place to go is our website, www.ufcw832.com. Look for the Loblaw link right at the very top of the home page, and that will take you to the most recent information from the bargaining table.
After we meet again on July six and seventh, I’ll send out another video so that you stay constantly updated on the process.
Thanks, and thank you for being involved with your union.