People who had given years even decades to Safeway were forced to uproot their families and leave their communities to follow Safeway to Tracy or start over again at another job. Once they arrived here they were no longer employed by Safeway but by a third party called SDMI and then later replaced by Summit Logistics. By hiring a third party Safeway acheived two things. The first being that it was no longer responsible for running the warehouses. The third party system allowed them to distance themselves as the bad guy, and it allowed them to claim ignorance to the problems at the Tracy facility.
Secondly it distanced it's work force from the bay area, the core of it's grocery chain. By moving it's operation to the central valley Safeway believes that you won't care about our problems, or that we won't leaflet it's stores. But their wrong! And just like Nike was held accountable for the inhumane manner in which it's third party treated Central American workers. So must Safeway be held accountable for it's third parties inhumane treatment of it's central valley workers.
3 years ago we agreed to a contract that we felt was ok, not great. We were wrong, the contract that we agreed to was totally in the company's favor. They were allowed to implement policies at will, and to increase production standards. One of the policies implemented was the audit program which basically let's them audit your work without mil standards or any kind of standard. Your work must be 100% accurate or you're wrote up and eventually terminated. They also have 90 second audits in which they audit any five cases at random if you get any wrong you could be wrote up. If you get it right you're not credited for it. In other words you could get 100 good audits and the very next bad one you get you're wrote up. Production standards have increased a whopping 20%. We also agreed to a 4-10 work week schedule, but we always work more than 10 hours per day, and we are asking for a 15 minute break at the end of our 10 hour shift, but the company refuses to discuss it.
What this all boils down to is that this a modern day david and goliath. On the one side you have this jagernaut of the grocery industry Safeway, and the billion dollar corporation Tibbett and Britten parent company of Summit Logistics which by the way is not even an American company. They are a company out of the United Kingdom. Which is notorious for union busting ,and specializes in fighting strikes,and on the other side you have ordinary hard working people who don't really want to strike, but will to get better working conditions, and a better livelihood for their families.
Everything that we've asked for Summit has put a dollar amount on it. You want to have a 15 minute break after 10 hours that will be a 10% increase. You want production standards lowered that'll be a 15% increase. They claim that we want a 54% increase. If we were to put a dollar amount on eveything that we have lost since 1992 it would add up to more than 54%. In 1984 Safeway's starting wage was $15.46 today Summit's starting wage is $11.50. We need your help. As we speak the company is training replacement workers, and has said it will bring scab workers from outside California to do the work. Safeway has scrambled to stock their shelves. Hopefully with your support they won't sell any groceries, and you'll be sending them a message to stop their corporate greed. Please support us. DON'T SHOP SAFEWAY!!!
