UFCW Union Launches Outdoor Billboard and Facebook Ads as Part of its 'Fix Fresh & Easy' Media Campaign

The billboard pictured above is on the 405-Freeway in Southern California.

Tesco's Fresh & Easy and the UFCW Union

The United Food & Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) has expanded its "Fix Fresh & Easy"media campaign from its initial website and social media efforts - Twitter feed, Facebook page and YouTube channel - to outdoor advertising and targeted advertisements on Facebook.

Additionally, the union has launched a new video on its YouTube channel, which is tied-in to the advertising campaign.

In a story on December 20, 2010 - UFCW Union Launches New 'Fix Fresh & Easy' Neighborhood Market Website and Social Media-Based Campaign - we reported that the UFCW union was launching its "Fix Fresh & Easy" Neighborhood Market campaign, which is a multi-media-based effort to draw attention to what the grocery clerks' union says are numerous problems at the Tesco-owned, El Segundo, California-based fresh food and grocery chain, which has had operating losses of over $500 million so far since the first Fresh & Easy markets opened in November 2007.

"Fix Fresh & Easy" is the latest effort by the UFCW to unionize store-level employees at United Kingdom-based Tesco's 156 Fresh & Easy markets in California, southern Nevada and metro Phoenix, Arizona, something the union, which represents about 1.5 million retail grocery clerks and workers in allied industries in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico, has been attempting to do beginning before the first stores opened in late 2007.

It's also a new tact for the UFCW union, in that "Fix Fresh & Easy" takes a "consultative" approach, pointing out what the union and some Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market store workers say are problems with how the chain is operated, then offering various solutions (fixes) to those problems, often times using employees of the chain to deliver those messages via various forms of media.

Outdoor advertising

The UFCW union has kicked-off the new outdoor advertising element of its "Fix Fresh & Easy campaign with a billboard (pictured at top), which is located on the busy 405-Freeway (southbound near Century Boulevard) in Southern California. The billboard is not only located in a spot that has some of the highest commuter traffic counts in Southern California, its also in a place that's nearby a number of Tesco's Fresh & Easy stores in the region.

The majority - 93 stores - of Tesco's 156 Fresh & Easy markets are located in Southern California. Fourteen stores are in the Bakersfield and Fresno (seven in each region) metro areas in California's Central Valley. The remaining stores are in the metro Phoenix, Arizona region - 28 units - and metro Las Vegas, Nevada, where Tesco has 21 Fresh & Easy stores.

The 405-Freeway location is the first billboard in the union's outdoor advertising campaign, and currently the only one. However, a spokesman for the UFCW union tells Fresh & Easy Buzz that additional billboards like the one pictured at top are planned for Southern California, and possibly Arizona and Nevada.

The billboard features a real union construction worker, called "The Repairman." The name plays off the "Fix Fresh & Easy" theme. The other people on the billboard with "The Repairman," wearing "Fresh & Easy Green" are Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market store workers from Southern California.

The UFCW spokesman says the theme of the billboard is designed to tie-in with the union's social media-based efforts, in which it's offering ways to "Fix Fresh & Easy," the leading suggestion being for the chain to sit down with representatives of the UFCW to discuss unionizing Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market store-level employees.

New video

The UFCW union has also launched a new video (see below) on YouTube, tied-in to the outdoor and Facebook advertising campaign. The less than two minute video, "Fresh & Easy Customers Speak Out," features "The Repairman." along with interviews with various Fresh & Easy store customers, discussing whether or not they will continue shopping at Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market in light of the unionization issue.

We asked the spokesman for the grocery clerks union to verify for Fresh & Easy Buzz that the people in the video are actual Fresh & Easy store customers. Here's what he said: "The people are real customers from [Fresh & Easy] stores across LA. They chose not to shop after being given a flyer, and then were approached and offered the opportunity to appear in the film."



Facebook ads

In addition to launching the outdoor advertising campaign with its first billboard on the 405-Freeway in Southern California, the UFCW union is also running two different ads on Facebook, as part of the popular social media site's targeted, paid advertising program.
The Facebook site ads are being run on a targeted, rotational basis to selected Facebook users, including Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market employees and customers in California, Nevada and Arizona, according to the union. (See the screenshots of the Facebook advertisements pictured above and below.) The UFCW union spokesperson says additional advertisements are being prepared to be run on Facebook as part of the campaign, adding the two current ads being started off on a "heavy" rotation," meaning they will show up frequently on the Facebook pages of the various targeted users.

More to come

The grocery clerks union is planning additional activity soon in its "Fix Fresh & Easy" media campaign, which in addition to a website, Twitter feed, Facebook page and YouTube channel, now also includes the Facebbok advertisement component and the outdoor advertising campaign.

Additionally, as we've been reporting in Fresh & Easy Buzz since 2009, the UFCW union locals in Northern California are preparing a local campaign of their own, targeted to when Tesco opens its first Fresh & Easy stores in San Jose and Danville (San Francisco Bay Area) on March 2, followed by the openings of nine other stores between March 9 and the end of April.

Although not yet announced by the grocer, two stores in San Francisco, in the Richmond and Bayview neighborhoods, are set to open in April or May, according to our sources, although those dates could change depending on if the stores are ready to open by then. [You can see the opening dates and locations of the 11 Northern California Fresh & Easy stores here.]

Fresh & Easy's response

Meanwhile, Tesco corporate director and Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market CEO Tim Mason has been using what you might call, borrowing from the world of diplomacy, a "soft power" approach, along with other efforts, to suggest to Fresh & Easy store employees that joining the UFCW union is not in their best interests. The program sends "Fresh & Easy Ambassadors" to the stores to talk with employees about the advantages of keeping Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market non-union. The "Ambassadors" aren't supposed to tell store workers not to organize a union, or that if they do so they will be looked on in a less than favorable light by senior management. Rather, their role is designed as a consultative or persuasive one, hence the "soft power" analogy.

Periodically CEO Mason has read reports prepared by the "Fresh & Easy Ambassadors" to corporate headquarters employees during meetings, according to sources who've been at the meetings, and has indicated he thinks the approach is working well as part of the chain's efforts to remain non-union, according to those sources.

Recent Related Stories

December 20, 2010: UFCW Union Launches New 'Fix Fresh & Easy' Neighborhood Market Website and Social Media-Based Campaign

December 20, 2010: Glassell Park-Los Angeles Store Workers Catalysts For New UFCW Campaign to Unionize Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market

October 6, 2010: The Daily Show Catches Las Vegas-Based UFCW Union Local 711 In Labor Relations 'Catch 22'

October 5, 2010: UFCW President Joe Hansen's Chairmanship of Change to Win Adds Fire Power to Union's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Campaign

September 30, 2010: Self-Service-Only Checkout Safe at California Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Stores Thanks to Governor's Veto Pen

Also, see (click on) the following links - F-E Employees and union issue, Fresh and Easy Eagle Rock Blvd. store in Los Angeles, Glassell Park Fresh and Easy, UFCW, UFCW Tesco Fresh and Easy Campaign, UFCW union, union and labor issues - for additional related stories.

Glassell Park-Los Angeles Store Workers Catalysts For New UFCW Campaign to Unionize Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market

Workers at the Glassell Park neighborhood Fresh & Easy store in Los Angeles, who say they have an employee-majority in favor of joining the UFCW union and becoming a union shop, speak out to fellow employees at other stores in the video above, which is part of a new multi-faceted campaign to unionize the Tesco-owned chain.

Breaking Buzz - News & Analysis

[Related Story - December 20, 2010: UFCW Union Launches New 'Fix Fresh & Easy' Neighborhood Market Website and Social Media-Based Campaign]

In July of this year we broke the news that a majority of employees who work at the Fresh & Easy store at 4211 Eagle Rock Boulevard in the Glassell Park neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles, California agreed among themselves to join the UFCW union, and formally requested recognition from executives at Tesco-owned Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market's corporate headquarters in El Segundo, California.

Read our story here - July 24, 2010: Employees at the Glassell Park-Eagle Rock Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Store in Los Angeles Seeking Union Recognition From Tesco

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, through the company's head of human resources, told the worker-majority at the Glassell Park store they would have to go through a federal government monitored open ballot election, which is what most non-union U.S. companies tell employees to do if they want to join a union, winning a majority of votes from all the employees, in order to be recognized by Tesco as a union shop. The Los Angeles store, like the other 154 small-format Fresh & Easy markets in California, Nevada and Arizona, employs 20-25 workers, not including the store manager.

Since we published our piece in July, employees at the store in Los Angeles, which was one of the first units in the chain to open three years ago, had been considering their next move.

A spokesperson for the Glassell Park store worker-majority recently told Fresh & Easy Buzz that although they still have a majority of store employees in favor of joining the UFCW union, they've decided for now they don't want to move for a union election for a variety of reasons.

Among the reasons the worker-majority has decided not to move for an election is the fact that as part of the election process, employers are allowed to bring in labor consultants (which unions refer to as union busters), who along with company executives can hold meetings with workers, where they can attempt to convince the employees to vote against unionization in the election prior to voting day. The union is also able to lobby the employees to vote for unionization as part of the election process, according to U.S. federal labor law.

The results of such an election - pro or con - are binding only for the one store. However, the outcome has a major influence on weather an entire chain remains non-union or becomes unionized. Therefore, the stakes of the outcome of such an election are high for all parties involved - Tesco's Fresh & Easy, the store employees and the UFCW union.

Instead of moving for a formal vote, the workers at the Eagle Rock Boulevard Fresh & Easy market in Los Angeles instead plan to try to convince the management of Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market to recognize their majority desire to become members of the UFCW union using means other than an open ballot election - at least for the near-term.

Earlier today we reported on a new website and social media-based campaign launched today by the UFCW union. [See - December 20, 2010: UFCW Union Launches New 'Fix Fresh & Easy' Neighborhood Market Website and Social Media-Based Campaign

The campaign, called Fix Fresh & Easy, is in large part the result of the success the employees of the Glassell Park, Los Angeles, Fresh & Easy store have had in gaining a majority towards their goal of becoming a union grocery store.

The Fix Fresh & Easy website and campaign are also in large part the result of the decision the store workers have made to not seek a formal union/non-union election.

The store's employees and the UFCW union have decided for now that rather than moving for an open ballot election at the Glassell Park Fresh & Easy market, they will instead launch a multi-faceted campaign, building on the recent success of the Los Angeles store workers' success in gaining a majority.

The new Fix Fresh & Easy website and social media-based campaign is part of that multi-faceted organizational effort and public relations campaign.

On another website set up by the UFCW, FreshandEasyVoice.com, which is linked at the new Fix Fresh & Easy website, employees of the Glassell Park store have authored and posted an open letter to their fellow Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market store employees, informing them they've gained a union majority at the Los Angeles store, and inviting them to join in the campaign to unionize, following the Eagle Rock Boulevard store employee model. You can read the open letter here.

FreshandEasyVoice.com, which is targeted to Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market store employees primarily, also offers additional organizational information and serves as a companion website to Fix Fresh & Easy.com, which is geared to a wider audience.

The tone of the store workers' letter strikes tones consistent with the new campaign to "Fix Fresh & Easy," in that it offers considerable positive comments about the grocery chain, suggesting that if it were unionized, Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market would then be even better than it already is.

This is a new approach from the UFCW union in two ways. First, unlike its ongoing campaign over the last three years, this new, element takes a much more positive and consultative approach. It's our analysis that this is the case in part because the new focus is employee-led, building on the ability of the Glassell Park Fresh & Easy store employees gaining a majority in favor of unionization.

This employee-led element, along with the new focus on "Fixing Fresh & Easy," could mark a significant turning point for the UFCW in its three-year effort to organize employees of United Kingdom-based Tesco's 155-store fresh food and grocery chain.

The UFCW union has been criticised by a fair number of shoppers for some of its organizational tactics, like heavy store picketing, which the union doesn't plan on stopping although it's doing it much less frequently than it did in the past, suggesting Tesco is a purveyor of unsafe food, based on past cases of outdated products being discovered in its stores in the United Kingdom, and other more aggressive tactics. The UFCW has said it's had to use these tactics because Tesco has been spending tons of money and playing hardball in its fight to prevent the stores from being unionized, despite public statements from company executives saying that if the employees want a union it's up to them to vote on in.

It's too early to tell if the new focus, adding a more positive element to the traditional organizational tactics, will work. But one thing is for sure: The new developments at the end of 2010 mark the beginnings of renewed efforts by the UFCW union to organize Fresh & Easy store workers, as well as to build support for those efforts among various stakeholders, including Tesco shareholders, the media and shoppers. And as we reported earlier today, the UFCW union plans to put an added focus on organizing Fresh & Easy store employees beginning fairly early in 2011.

Stay tuned. Fresh & Easy Buzz will be covering the UFCW-Tesco Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market unionization topic and issue closely, along with offering extensive analysis, as we've been doing for three years.

Reader Resource

Click here, here and here for a selection of our past stories about the UFCW union and its campaign to unionize store-level employees at Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market. Note: Click on the green "older posts" and "newer posts" links at the bottom of each page for additional posts.

Writers-At-Large: Scott Timberg - 'New York Times:' The (Perhaps Not So Good) Changes in Los Angeles' Eagle Rock Neighborhood

Pictured above: The Eagle Rock neighborhood in Los Angeles: Lot's of changes in the last six or seven years. But also still a bit "old school." [Photo Credit: Stephanie Diani.]

The Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market grocery and fresh foods market in Los Angeles' Eagle Rock neighborhood (also referred to as Glassell Park) on the Northeast edge of "The City of Angels" was one of the very first Fresh & Easy stores Tesco opened when it began its rapid new store opening program in the fall of 2007.

The Eagle Rock store, along with five other Fresh & Easy markets in Southern California (a sixth store, in Hemet, California, had a soft opening about two weeks earlier but held its grand opening on November 8, 2007 along with the other five stores), were all opened on the same day by Tesco, November 8, 2007.

The six Fresh & Easy stores that officially opened on November 8, 2007 are:

>4211 Eagle Rock Blvd., Los Angeles
>3170 W. Lincoln Ave., Anaheim
>1000 W. Covina Parkway, West Covina
>133 E. Foothill Blvd, Arcadia
>176 S. Mountain Ave., Upland
>1709 W. Florida Ave., Hemet

And for Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, Eagle Rock has been one of the better store locations the grocery chain has chosen for one of its small-format, convenience-oriented, combination grocery and fresh foods Fresh & Easy markets.

The Eagle Rock-Los Angeles unit is one of a handful of the current Tesco Fresh & Easy stores that is averaging $200,000 per-week in average sales, which is the average sales target for all of the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market stores Tesco had hoped to achieve before the end of 2008, an overall weekly sales target the 114 stores overall haven't yet come close to achieving.

Pictured above: A shopper checks out the ingredients on a package of snack foods at the Eagle Rock, Los Angeles Fresh & Easy grocery and fresh foods market

Just six -to- seven years ago Eagle Rock was a lower -to- middle income neighborhood, mostly blue collar. It's still mainly middle-income. But over the years the neighborhood has experienced gentrification, an urban planning term taken from the old British term "landed gentry," meaning the change that takes place when the "new gentry" moves into a neighborhood in masses and changes the character of that neighborhood or entire city dramatically.

In the case of Los Angeles' Eagle Rock neighborhood, that "new gentry" is what urban planners call the "creative class," mostly young professionals who, like they have over the last few years in urban neighborhoods throughout the U.S. (San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, New York, Boston, for example), discover a blue collar or lower -to- middle income neighborhood with fairly low rents and housing costs, and much "hip potential," and begin moving in and changing the neighborhood in ways young professionals do: More street life, which leads to more cafes, art galleries, hip boutiques and the like. The term "creative class" was coined and popularized by author Richard Florida in his best selling book, "The Rise of the Creative Class."

The members of this "creative class" who've been moving into the Eagle Rock neighborhood in considerable numbers over the six or seven years include Hollywood screenwriters and movie animators, music composers, Web site designers, artists, graphic designers and others in the mostly creative professions, but also young professionals in other less creative occupations.

This isn't a new phenomenon in Los Angeles. Similar gentrification happened long ago in once lower -to- middle income neighborhoods in the city like Silver Lake and Los Feliz.

Over the last six or seven years the look, feel and mix of businesses in Eagle Rock have started to change, reflecting a bit the changing neighborhood demographics. The neighborhood that once was filled mostly with auto repair shops, greasy spoon restaurants and similar businesses, now also has a few trendy boutiques, cafes and other "creative class"-demanded shops and businesses -- and a Tesco Fresh & Easy market.

Tesco saw this rapid gentrification -- along with the fact that the neighborhood was underserved by grocery stores that offer a decent selection of groceries and fresh foods at affordable prices -- and quickly acquired a site in Eagle Rock for one of its Fresh & Easy markets, which is now among that first wave of the grocer's stores that's been opened about 15 months now.

But the bloom is coming off Los Angeles' Eagle Rock neighborhood in the current economic recession, as it is in numerous neighborhoods in California and elsewhere in the U.S. that have undergone gentrification and upscaling over the last decade.

The "creative class," after all, isn't recession-proof. Far from it.

In fact, some residents of Eagle Rock are beginning to feel that a negative economic tsunami is about to hit the neighborhood in the form of a wave of numerous business closings (some closings have already started) and other recessionary downers.

Writer Scott Timberg recently wrote a profile of Los Angeles' Eagle Rock neighborhood for the Fashion & Style section of the New York Times. The profile piece, "When the Next Wave Wipes Out," captures the current feel -- and the feelings of a number of its residents -- in the changing neighborhood located in Northeastern Los Angeles.

We recently visited the Fresh & Easy market in Eagle Rock, our fifth trip to the store since it opened. The store was humming along pretty well in terms of customer-count on the day and evening we visited in late January.

The Eagle Rock-Los Angeles Fresh & Easy store benefits greatly from two things: It's just about the only full-service grocery market in the immediate neighborhood; and Eagle Rock has a very high-percentage of consumers aged about 18-34, (members of the Millennial Generation -- born 1980 -to- 2000 -- with a couple added years in our research), which is the one demographic thus far our research has identified as having started to develop an affinity among many of its members to the Fresh & Easy retail brand and format.

We felt the changes and feelings described in the New York Times' piece while in Eagle Rock as well, particularly the dashed hopes among many of the residents for the neighborhood because of the recession. For some those dashed hopes are a "good thing" as they don't want Eagle Rock to become another trendy Los Angeles neighborhood.

It will be fascinating to watch the evolution of Eagle Rock during this recession, which isn't ending anytime soon, and after. And the Tesco Fresh & Easy store in Eagle Rock offers a pretty good Anthropological outpost for doing so. And we observed, and talked to, numerous Eagle Rock residents when we were last in the store who were doing just that -- discussing and analyzing the current and future state of their neighborhood.

Below (in italics) is the New York Times' feature piece (published originally on February 25, 2009) by Scott Timberg:

New York Times Style & Fashion

When the Next Wave Wipes Out
By Scott Timberg
February 25, 2009
Los Angeles, California

WHEN Emily Cook, a screenwriter, bought a house four years ago in Eagle Rock, a neighborhood on the Northeast side of Los Angeles, she fantasized what the area might look like in a year or two, with cafes and boutiques replacing tattered old businesses. “It was like fantasy football,” said Ms. Cook, 38, who also sings in a band named Fonda.

A sad flower shop on the corner, she thought, could become a miniature Whole Foods. An upholstery store could be a gastropub where she and friends would grab a beer, and a neglected 1940s diner could become a retro spot for a quick meal.

But Ms. Cook has stopped fantasizing about what might be, and started worrying about what might shut down. The flower store has closed; no gourmet market is moving in. Lucy Finch, a vintage boutique, folded last month. That Yarn Store, a hangout for crochet-heads, didn’t survive a bad winter.

[Click hear to read the full story from the New York Times.]

Vox Populi: The People Speak on a Fresh & Easy Store

Since November, 2007 when the store opened, 33 people (to date) have reviewed the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market store on Eagle Rock Blvd. in the city of Los Angeles, California on the review website Yelp.

The 33 reviews range from very positive, to rather negative, and a few in between. They also range from long treatises, to reviews consisting of short and pithy sentences. (The store is located at 4211 Eagle Rock Blvd., Los Angeles, California, 90065.)

Based on our sources and on reader comments, the Eagle Rock store has been on of the busiest and most popular Fresh & Easy grocery markets to date. There currently are 33 Fresh & Easy grocery markets in Southern California, Arizona and Nevada.

Read the Yelp.com store reviews here.