We’ve been bargaining with UFCW 1518 and your bargaining committee since January of this year.

We are now in a critical phase of these talks that will hopefully lead us to a modernized and competitive collective agreement. We need a deal that works for our company, and for you — our teammates — and will allow Safeway to be successful.

We want to set the record straight on recent communications from UFCW 1518:

• We value our teammates and have always treated them with the utmost respect.
• We remain committed to reaching a fair and competitive collective agreement with UFCW 1518 and your bargaining committee. We’ve agreed to additional dates in September with UFCW 1518 where we hope to reach an agreement.

We also want to be clear that:

• There’s been significant developments in the industry including a new settlement between UFCW 1518 and Save-On-Foods. This is a major development and our company must take the time required to fully analyze the costs and impact of this settlement and the potential impact on the Safeway network.
• Safeway is not the same as Save-On-Foods. Save-On-Foods is a privately held company with no public visibility on their operations or financial performance. However, what we do know is that they have three times the number of stores and market share in B.C. compared to Safeway.
• Save-On-Foods is not our only competitor. Walmart and Real Canadian Superstore are major competitors in the industry and they benefit from a much less expensive labour cost structure than Safeway does.
• It’s no secret that British Columbia is facing a challenging and uncertain economic environment.
• We have many terms in our collective agreement that don’t exist elsewhere which make it more expensive to run our stores and more difficult to compete in the industry. We need a competitive deal that will help Safeway compete into the future.

We look forward to working with UFCW 1518 and your bargaining committee on collaborative solutions for these challenges as we seek to achieve a fair, modern and competitive collective agreement.

We’ll continue to keep you up to date on progress.