Strike Averted: New Seasons Grocery Workers Secure First Labor Contract

If a tentative agreement wasn’t reached by then, NSLU officials said, they would strike on December 17—ahead of one of the busiest seven-day stretches of the year for the grocery chain in the lead-up to Christmas. 

“Considering how far apart we were on some of the really important issues in the contract, I think for most of October and November we were pretty much fully focused on strike preparation,” Robbins said. “We were still in bargaining at this time, but it could feel like kind of beating your head against the wall.”

Ultimately, however, that changed: After months of stalled negotiations, New Seasons sent out an improved contract offer to NSLU’s membership on December 2. Suddenly, an agreement was within reach. 

The two sides finalized a deal on December 4, and NSLU members voted to ratify the contract in a union-wide vote held over the last week. The union announced the ratification on Tuesday morning.  

The contract includes a $19-per-hour starting wage for new employees—a number Robbins believes is the highest in the Portland area. It’s a significant step up from the current starting rate, which was $16.30. Continuing workers will see hourly pay increases of between 50 and 70 cents, and wages will rise yearly with cost of living adjustments. 

This is a first contract for unionized New Seasons workers, and it was years in the making. The first New Seasons locations began unionizing through National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) elections in 2022, just months before Robbins joined the company, and began bargaining shortly thereafter. 

Norah Rivera, an NSLU co-chair and a produce department worker at the Seven Corners location, believes the strike threat was key to moving New Seasons to meet more of the union’s demands. 

“I think the company was terrified of us going on strike,” Rivera said. “I think they were terrified of money loss, as well as the PR nightmare for them.” 

New Seasons did not respond to a request for comment on this story. 

It has been a momentous few months for NSLU: formed as one of a number of new, independent unions, NSLU affiliated with United Electrical & Machine Workers of America (UE) in September. The decision to affiliate with UE changed the dynamics in the contract negotiations. 

“That gave us, pretty immediately, some more leverage at the bargaining table,” Rivera said. “Prior to our affiliation, the company pretty accurately could have assumed we had no money. Following this affiliation, we were pretty open about the money UE was giving us.”

Rivera said that, if NSLU workers went on strike, UE was prepared to support their strike fund to the tune of $250,000—more money, she said, than NSLU had been able to fundraise over the past three years.

Rivera said a strike still would have been possible without UE’s support, but that workers would not have been able to stay out of work for nearly as long. 

Now, however, instead of a strike to begin the holidays, the roughly 850 union members working at the 10 unionized New Seasons stores in the Portland area will be working under a contract that ensures across-the-board pay raises. Twelve New Seasons locations are not unionized. 

In addition to higher wages, the NSLU also secured what it sees as a victory on health insurance. For years, New Seasons has offered health benefits to employees who work at least 24 hours per week—but said during negotiations that they would be forced to raise the minimum number of hours to as high as 28 per week.

The union balked at that proposal, as well as another proposal that employees working prior to the ratification of the contract could keep the 24 hour minimum for health insurance, but that new employees would be subject to a higher number of minimum hours. 

“I’m really proud of the fact that our membership stood united behind saying no to that, because I think it shows a real solidarity and understanding that we’re not just bargaining for ourselves and our material conditions, but those who come after us.”

In addition to keeping the 24-hour-per-week minimum, the contract includes new parameters around scheduling—giving workers preferred days off based on seniority and limiting the extent to which workers can be scheduled with fewer than 12 hours between shifts or for as many as seven consecutive days. 

The improved wages and protections may put New Seasons in a difficult position vis-a-vis its non-unionized stores as well. 

“The company is sort of in a position where if they roll out these things to the stores, they’ll see them as a win for the union—and if they don’t roll them out to those stores, those stores are going to look to unionizing in order to get those things,” Rivera said. 

The contract is significant, not only for New Seasons employees in the short-term, but for grocery workers more broadly. 

“Conditions are grim, even in stores… that have been unionized for a long time,” Robbins said. “When you compare to the career that you used to be able to make out of working in a grocery store, we don’t see that anymore. Conditions have been so degraded over time, it really felt like this was a necessary thing to do.” 

Robbins said the consolidation of power in the industry in the hands of a select few corporations like Walmart and Kroger is partially to blame for the degradation in the working conditions, and even smaller grocery companies like New Seasons, which is now owned by the Korean megachain Emart, are often not locally owned.

The challenges of working in the grocery industry have been compounded in recent years by significant increases in the cost of living in the Portland area—a reality that made Monday’s contract ratification even more significant. 

“For myself and so many other people who have been alongside us, this has been most of our lives for upwards of three years at this point,” Robbins said. “It feels incredible to finally be at a milestone.”