Photo: Talia Herman / Special To The Chronicle 2019

The union representing 14,000 Safeway workers from Eureka to Monterey canceled its contract with the grocery chain after negotiating for a year and a half and is pushing to strike, although the company hopes to avert that outcome.

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5 needs the go-ahead from its international counterpart, which could take a couple of weeks. In the meantime, local workers are planning a series of escalating actions starting with an informational picket outside the Belmont Safeway at 1100 El Camino Real on Tuesday from 4 to 6 p.m.

Workers want higher wages and more full-time instead of part-time opportunities because they say it’s faster to climb the wage scale. Bay Area residents argue they can’t live off the same wages as their counterparts in the San Joaquin Valley, which Safeway was proposing, because of the cost of living. The last time Safeway workers in Northern California went on strike was in 1995, the union said.

A spokeswoman for Safeway, which is headquartered in Pleasanton and owned by Albertsons, said the grocery chain offered to schedule more bargaining sessions and keep negotiating new contracts “that are fair for both our employees and the company” with the goal of reaching an agreement without a strike or any form of a labor dispute.

“Safeway remains committed to bargaining in good faith with the union to reach an agreement that will provide employees a competitive compensation package, maintain affordable health care, and provide a pension for their retirement, while allowing our company to stay competitive in the Northern California market,” spokeswoman Wendy Gutshall said in an email.

Safeway workers make anywhere from $9.50 to $22.22 an hour depending on how long they’ve worked there and in what position, according to the union’s wage scale. The union rejected a proposed contract that would have raised each worker’s wages by $1.50 per hour over the next three years.

The union represents everyone from grocery baggers to butchers to delivery drivers. In San Francisco, clerks are represented by a different union, which is voting on its own contract Friday.

The union said only around 20% of positions are full-time, which can work for students or those with temporary needs, but once workers get older, they want full-time jobs, which are less likely to be available.

Employees have been working off extensions of the expired contract since October 2018 as bargaining continued, until the contract was finally canceled Monday.

Mallory Moench is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mallory.moench@sfchronicle.com Twitter@mallorymoench