SEATTLE — The union representing 25,000 grocery employees in the Puget Sound region voted to ratify their contract, bringing many workers higher wages and increased funding to health care and pension plans.
Union members with United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) 3000 will see wage increases of $4 to $9 an hour for the most veteran workers during the term of the agreement.
The three-year contract eliminates lower pay scales in certain departments like deli, bakery, fuel and e-commerce, and includes a "stronger ability of store-level safety committees to address serious safety issues, beyond just COVID protections," according to a UFCW news release.
Sam Dancy, a front-end supervisor for the QFC store in West Seattle's Westwood Village, is a shop steward for the union and helped negotiate the terms of the contract.
"A lot of people realized that they've been doing a lot of hard work, but they've been getting paid less,” said Dancy. “So, what it did, it opened the eyes to these people who realized that look - we deserve more.”
The union contract comes as workers for America's largest corporations make moves to unionize, including Amazon workers in New York. In Seattle, Starbucks employees in Capitol Hill voted to unionize in March.
"I think that it's kind of setting the landscape for a lot of people," said Dancy.
The contract approval comes as QFC and Fred Meyer held one of their biggest hiring events of the year. The QFC location in University Village hosted a spring hiring fair on Saturday, with the goal to fill 400 positions for QFC and 800 for Fred Meyer, according to QFC Human Resources Field Specialist Jennifer Durban.
The store's proximity to the University of Washington drew interest among students.
"When you look at the workforce now, we got a lot of young college kids applying," said store manager Kevin Heuser.
Interested applicants can find information about job openings at jobs.qfc.com.