The call for a boycott comes amid intense labor negotiations. The retail grocery workers' union is calling for higher wages and an elimination of a gender wage gap.

PORTLAND, Ore. — The union representing local Fred Meyer workers is asking shoppers to boycott stores in Oregon and Southwest Washington.

UFCW Local 555, the retail grocery workers' union, made the announcement Sunday morning. The union said employees at the stores are currently working without a contract.

This comes after the union voted to authorize a strike a few weeks ago, though members would not like that move to be the first option.

In its call for the boycott, the union said Fred Meyer/Kroger has "continually refused to respond to reasonable pleas to fix gross inequity in pay and thereafter committed unfair labor practices to coerce employees to settle for less."

For more than 15 months, the union has been trying to negotiate better pay with the region's biggest supermarkets, including Fred Meyer, QFC, Safeway and Albertsons. The union is negotiating on behalf of about 25,000 workers across Oregon and Southwest Washington.

In addition to overall pay increase, union president Daniel Clay said there is a gender wage gap the union wants addressed.

"It's not something as easy to fix as you might hope in 2019," Clay told KGW earlier this month. "[Workers] should be able to have a roof over their heads, should be able to provide for their families — food, shelter, take the kids to the doctor. Pretty simple. Not a huge ask."

UCFW Local 555 alleges after they cancelled contract extensions for employees in the check-out department, a number of Fred Meyer managers began treating employees unfairly in what are referred to as unfair labor practices (ULPs).

"They were calling members into these one-on-one meetings called 'captive audience' meetings and harassing them, telling them they were worthless, telling them they could be replaced by someone off the street, trying to coerce them to leave the union. Just a bunch of scare and intimidation tactics," Kelley McAllister, the union's communications director, said.

McAllister says those are violations of labor law. So the union gathered documentation, including record of the company telling managers what to do during meetings, and they filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board.

Fred Meyer spokesperson Jeffrey Temple tells KGW those allegations are completely untrue and misleading. He says the company wouldn't stand for any type of coercion and one-on-one meetings are only initiated by employees.

Temple also says boycotting Fred Meyer hurts employees and their families, communities and customers, and it helps non-union competitors. He notes Fred Meyer is proposing wage increases and offers a solid benefits package and a pension.

Employees in most departments at 57 Fred Meyer locations in Oregon and Southwest Washington are working without labor contracts at the moment. The union works with the grocery retail companies to negotiate wages and wage scales based on job type and hours worked.

Local 555 commissioned an outside agency to dig into whether there was a gender disparity in pay for grocery contract employees at Portland-area Fred Meyer stores.

They found men are earning more than women at Fred Meyer stores. But to be clear: women are not making less than men doing the same job in the same department for the same amount of time.

In the grocery contracts, there are Schedule A and Schedule B jobs with difference wage scales. Schedule A makes more than B. There are mostly men in Schedule A departments, while women are much more likely to work in lower-paying Schedule B departments. That is driving the gender gap.

The discrepancy for grocery contract employees is caused by an over-representation of women in lower-paid, historically-female Schedule B departments, such as the bakery and deli. The study found since the 1930's those departments in Fred Meyer have employed women working in lower wage scales than male-dominated departments like grocery and produce.

Each position has its own set of requirements and responsibilities, but researchers found many employees in both schedules stock shelves, prepare food, work as cashiers and provide customer service.

"I think it's a legacy problem," McAllister added. "I think what happened was this two-tiered wage schedule just sort of stayed in place for a while and then what we have, the reason we're seeing women pushed into those Schedule B jobs, is just a long-term perception, a collective unconscious of what sort of constitutes women's work versus men's work. And that's just not true anymore. And the reason we've never brought it up before is because we've never had documentation until this contract cycle."

Temple disagreed with the accusation of a gender wage gap. He said the gap does not exist and that some jobs pay more based on the type of work and hours required.

"Every associate in the same job type is paid the same, whether they are a woman or a man. We don’t funnel people into certain job types based on their gender, rather we encourage all applicants to apply for jobs that appeal best to them and their lifestyle so they’ll hopefully love their work and stay with the company," Temple told KGW, "The tiers in place, the matrix that is in place, is what was negotiated for union members by the union."

More research needs to be done on why the positions have such different wage rates, the study found. Fred Meyer argues that specific roles pay differently based on things such as job difficulty, hours, scheduling requirements, etc.

The next round of bargaining with all grocery chains, including Fred Meyer, QFC, Safeway and Albertsons, is scheduled for Sept. 26 and 27, the union said.