During the 10-day strike by roughly 31,000 Stop & Shop workers the past couple of weeks, the supermarket chain ran a series of ads like this one in the Boston dailies.
Last Friday the five locals of the United Food and Commercial Workers responded with this clearly superior ad in the Boston Globe.
The UFCW won not only the ad battle, but the contract skirmish as well, as Globe reporter Katie Johnston details on Page One of today’s edition.
If members of the five union locals approve — voting starts later this week — new part-time workers would get lower pension contributions and would not be guaranteed time-and-a-half pay on Sundays and holidays during their first three years, as other workers are, according to the union. In a workforce largely made up of part-timers, this is not an insignificant change.
But the union succeeded in beating back a raft of other proposals. And if the contract is approved, current workers would get raises and the company would boost pension contributions for full-timers and maintain its current contributions for part-timers. That prompted the president of one of the five union locals to declare a “major victory.”
UMass Amherst labor studies professor Tom Juravich agreed, noting that 75% of loyal shoppers stayed away during the strike and the company lost $2 million a day. “That kind of leverage is unprecedented since the golden years of auto and steel,” he told Johnston.
So it was, well, interesting to see this ad also run in today’s Globe.
Sorry, fellas. Your customers were neither patient nor understanding. And they definitely did not stick with you.
You got your ads kicked.
It's Good to Live in a Two-Daily Town 