After voting over the previous three days Kroger members of UFCW 1059 approved and ratified their 4th contract offer with 3,546 “Yes” votes to 3,193 “No” votes.
Kroger 1059 members had previously rejected their new three-year deal three times as negotiations between UFCW 1059 and Kroger corporate have been on-and-off since late July.
Even if they had rejected their contract a fourth straight time the union would only have authorized a strike if 66 percent of members voted ‘No’ this fourth time, this according to Kroger workers to the Free Press.
For the 3rd vote, 55 percent voted “No” and 44 percent “Yes,” which would have made the 66 percent threshold an uphill battle for the 12,000-plus Kroger members of UFCW 1059.
Worse, say Kroger workers, is how they previously voted to authorize a strike in the 3rd vote, but the union instead went back to the bargaining table.
As word spread last night that the contract had passed, stunned Kroger workers turned to social media to express their frustration.
“Why now and not the other times?” wrote one worker on a Kroger online forum. “It was the same contract!! Let the job search begin.”
