Updated 6:54 p.m.

Union workers seeking a contract with Burgerville said they will wage a large-scale strike after negotiations with the company collapsed late Friday afternoon.

Members of the Burgerville Workers Union said negotiations ended just after 5:30 p.m., when representatives for the regional fast-food chain said they would not agree to a final wage proposal offered by the union.

The impasse comes after both sides spent more than 16 months trying to reach a deal at the bargaining table.

“It’s complete war going forward,” Mark Medina, one of the union’s chief negotiators and an employee at the restaurant’s Southeast 92nd Avenue and Powell location, told The Oregonian/OregonLive. “We can’t work when this company doesn’t fundamentally care about its workers.”

In a statement, Burgerville CEO Jill Taylor said the company was disappointed that it couldn’t reach a deal with union workers on wages.

The two sides had already reached tentative agreements on a host of other policies, including changes to anniversary pay, paid parental leave and more flexible sick leave, the statement said.

“We are a company that invests in the entire region through our employees, our communities, and our farmers and ranchers," said Taylor. "The union can walk away, but we’re not.”

Union members and their supporters will hold a rally in downtown Portland on Saturday and lead a march to the chain’s Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard location — one of five Burgerville restaurants that comprise the workers’ historic, federally recognized union.

Picket lines will begin to crop up next week at the chain’s union restaurants, Medina said, though he did not specify a date.

In April 2018, workers at Medina’s Southeast 92nd and Powell location made history by becoming the first in decades to organize a union drive at a fast-food establishment in the U.S.

Since then, the company’s Hawthorne location as well as three other shops — in Gladstone, Portland’s Montavilla neighborhood and near the Oregon Convention Center — have also held successful union drives.

Members of the Industrial Workers of the World — better known as the Wobblies — in 2016 helped launch the union campaign, which has been led by restaurant employees.

The looming strike comes as the Vancouver-based company announced that it will bump base pay to $13.50 for all workers in Oregon and Washington beginning Dec. 30. Burgerville said it took out a $3 million loan to create the pay raise for workers.

That wage increase, however, fell short of the proposals sought by the union, which initially included a $5-an-hour raise for its workers. The company in its statement Friday said that would have amounted to a 36% wage increase for only about 12% of its workforce.

Burgerville, owned by Holland Inc., has about 1,500 employees across 41 locations in Oregon and southern Washington.

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh; 503-294-7632

Email at skavanaugh@oregonian.com

Follow on Twitter @shanedkavanaugh

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