(Updated Monday, Aug. 26, with statement from Fred Meyer Stores, Inc.) Grocery store workers in Oregon and Southwest Washington have voted to authorize a strike if the workers’ union fails to reach a satisfying agreement with negotiators representing such stores as Fred Meyer, QFC, Safeway and Albertsons.

Members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555 in Baker City voted on Saturday night to authorize a strike. That vote concluded a series of 92 meetings held this summer across Oregon and Southwest Washington, according to Kelley McAllister, the union’s communications director. Members of the union voted nearly unanimously, McAllister said, to authorize a strike if needed.

That doesn’t mean a strike is inevitable, McAllister said, but it does give the Local 555 Unity Bargaining Team the power to call for a strike, increasing the pressure on the grocery chains to make a deal.

The two sides have been negotiating since June of 2018, McAllister said, but workers and employers have yet to reach terms they both accept.

Though individual contracts vary in details, McAllister said wages have been a sticking point. “We’re really far apart from the employers,” McAllister said.

Fred Meyer has been posting negotiation updates online. The company’s offer, McAllister said, calls for proposed wage rate increases that are considerably smaller than what the union is looking for.

McAllister said the union is also seeking to help remedy gender-based pay disparities at Fred Meyer stores, as highlighted in a recent pay equity study published by Olympic Analytics, a Seattle-based firm that, according to its website, provides research, training and consulting services for labor unions, non-profits and government agencies. The study, paid for by the union, found that women were more likely to occupy jobs in lower-paying departments.

“Grocery jobs used to be solidly middle-class jobs,” McAllister said. “As income inequity gets so much worse, we’re having many workers pushed to the brink of homelessness, as wages remain stagnant.”

There’s no hard-and-fast deadline for when a strike might be called, McAllister said. The next step is the upcoming negotiation session between the Unity Bargaining Team and the employers' negotiators, which happens in Portland on Aug. 29.

“We’ll see how that goes,” McAllister said.

Efforts to reach representatives from Fred Meyer and Safeway/Albertsons companies were unsuccessful Sunday.

UPDATE: Monday morning, Jeffery Temple, director of corporate affairs for Fred Meyer Stores, Inc., emailed a statement regarding a possible strike. The statement reads, in part:

“The recent statements about an alleged pay gap based on gender between women and men working at Fred Meyer are simply not true, and we see them as an unfortunate misrepresentation of our associates.”

The statement goes on to say that every associate, female or male, in the same job type is “paid equally based on the wage progressions that have been negotiated for them by the union,” and that some jobs, such as overnight grocery freight crew work, are higher-paid based on the type of work and schedule demands.

“We are one of the few companies in the retail industry with a history of working in partnership with unions,” the statement continues. Diverting shopping from Fred Meyer to other non-union grocers would not help the negotiation efforts."

In a statement posted to a Fred Meyer online site discussing the negotiations, the company said:

“We will continue to bargain in good faith and want a balanced contract – one that rewards you with increases in your pay, maintains premium affordable health care and a pension for your retirement. A fair and balanced agreement with our associates is critical to the health and success of the company.

We are all on the same team and want the same thing: A thriving, stable company that can provide employment with fair pay and with quality benefits for you and your family.”

-- Kristi Turnquist

kturnquist@oregonian.com 503-221-8227 @Kristiturnquist

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