We’re back at the bargaining table with UFCW 1518 in Vancouver this week to get an agreement in place for our valued team members.

Our goal is to negotiate a fair deal that will work for everyone. The grocery industry is more competitive than ever, and we need a new agreement that will allow us to face these challenges head on, together.

In recent years our competitors have added more than two million square feet of store space across the province. That’s equal to approximately 57 Safeway stores!

Much of this new store space is occupied by discount grocery banners. More than half of all grocery shopping now takes place at discount stores like No Frills, and Walmart Supercentres. If you’ve shopped in one of these stores, you know they don’t look much like a traditional Safeway.

That doesn’t mean we aren’t committed to our Safeway stores. It means that to compete we need to provide our customers with more options so they continue shopping with us.

One of the biggest challenges we face is that it costs us more than our competitors to run our stores. We need competitive operating costs if we’re going to stay in business. And most importantly we want to be in a position to introduce our exciting new FreshCo. stores into the province to take on the competition.

It’s important for you to understand some of these facts so that you understand why we have to take action to save jobs and keep stores open.

We love our community in British Columbia and look forward to a bright future here. We’ve expanded and remodeled beautiful new Safeway Extra stores in Dawson Creek, Burquitlam and Willowbrook in Langley and recently renovated the Shaughnessy Station location.

We look forward to working with your union to find the right solutions to secure a strong and exciting future for all of us.

Keep checking in with us at www.safewaytalks.ca for updates. Don’t forget to sign-up to receive email updates at Safeway Talks.