The Week in the War on Workers: Stop & Shop employees ready to walk over health coverage changes

Scabs Recruited as 40,000 New England Grocery Workers Prepare To Strike

'Instead of spending the money on setting up
 these [replacement worker] hiring centers,
why don't they spend the money on their
existing employees?' asks Taunette Greene,
 a 39-year New England Stop & Shop
employee on the union's negotiating team. A leading supermarket chain in New England began recruiting scabs on a large scale this week as the union representing some 40,000 of its workers girds for a potential strike later this month.Stop & Shop, with more than 250 grocery stores in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, opened 14 recruitment sites across the region with the goal of hiring 'replacement workers,' confirms company spokeswoman Suzi Robinson. The recruits would replace members of five local units of the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) union in the event of a strike or lockout on February 24, when current collective bargaining agreements expire. The hitch in negotiations has been over the implementation of the federal Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. [...]

Stop & Shop is currently demanding the right to cut off insurance coverage for many part-time workers in early 2014, according to a statement from Rick Charette, chairman of the New England UFCW negotiating committee. The demand is based on the supposition that good health insurance coverage will be available to those workers through state-operated insurance 'exchanges' envisioned by Obamacare, Charette indicated.

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