On March 28, Hon. Harry Bains, Minister of Labour, appointed a Special Officer to help us move the reopener and the New Banner bargaining along with UFCW 1518.

It’s important that we reach agreements that work for everyone and we look forward to working with Special Officer, Vince Ready and your unions to help us get there.

Competition is growing and in recent years our competitors have added more than two million square feet of store space across B.C. – that’s equal to 57 Safeway stores! We also know that our customer demands are changing; discount stores like No Frills now make up nearly 44 per cent of the Canadian food retail market. Reaching collective agreements that will allow us to compete more effectively will help us tackle these challenges head on in B.C.

We look forward to working collaboratively with Mr. Ready and your unions to achieve agreements that will help us take on the competition, respond to changing customer preferences and bring our FreshCo. stores to B.C.

Together we’ll get it done.

Keep up-to-date with what’s going on at www.SafewayTalks.ca.