Pro-Union Workers' Group and UFCW Union Speak Out On Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market's $300 Million-Plus Loss



The billboard above, at the 405-Freeway (southbound near Century Boulevard) in Southern California, is part of the UFCW's campaign to unionize Fresh & Easy.

 News/Analysis

A group of store-level workers who've banned together to organize fellow employees and unionize Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market reacted this morning to Tesco's report yesterday that the United Kingdom-based retailer lost a whopping $307 million at its El Segundo, California-based fresh food and grocery chain in its 2010/11 fiscal year, whch ended February 26, 2011.

The Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market employee group, led primarily by workers at the Tesco-owned chain's store on Eagle Rock Boulevard in Los Angeles' Glassell Park neighborhood, said this morning in a statement released by the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) union that, as employees, they're "very concerned" over the $300 million-plus in losses Fresh & Easy sustained in Tesco's 2010/11 fiscal year,

As we reported yesterday, Tesco's Fresh & Easy lost about $307 million, on sales of about $818 million, in its 2010/11 fiscal year, which ended on February 26, 2011. (Note: You will see slightly different loss numbers reported in the millions, depending on the publication doing so. That's because Tesco reports its financial numbers in British pounds. Therefore, the numbers can vary slightly depending on conversion rate use and timing.)

The employee group also takes Fresh & Easy's continued poor performance directly to the corner office in El Segundo, saying: "Tesco Director and Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Chief Executive Officer Tim Mason has refused to work with union and community groups to improve Fresh & Easy stores and make them more successful in their communities. Tesco's Fresh & Easy stores have suffered losses every year since the U.S. grocery chain was launched in 2007, and have never posted a profit in the U.S."

"Even after four years of losses for Fresh & Easy stores, Tesco paid Tim Mason around $7 million last year," said worker Lisa Austin. “We’re struggling to survive and make our stores a success on minimal wages and unaffordable health care, but he’s making millions while Fresh & Easy fails. It doesn’t make any sense." [Click here to read a series of stories about Mason's compensation. At the linked page you can click on the older posts/newer posts links at the bottom for additional stories on the subject.]

Austin, who's one of the leaders of the store-level employee group working with the UFCW to organize Fresh & Easy's workers, recently spoke at an April 5, 2011 rally to unionize Fresh & Easy, which we reported on in detail here: UFCW Union, Activists and Employees Hold Pro-Union Rallies at 25 Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Stores in California.

In the joint Fresh & Easy worker-UFCW statement this morning, the union's spokesman, Evan Yates, had strong words for Tesco and its 172-store Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market chain, saying "the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), community groups, politicians and Fresh & Easy workers have tried to work with Tesco to make Fresh & Easy a success since the company announced its entry into the U.S. grocery market. To date, Tesco has maintained its anti-union, anti-worker and anti-community stance and launched its chain of Fresh & Easy markets in 2007 as non-union stores."

Tesco's position, which it's held since the UFCW first began organizing Fresh & Easy employees in 2007, is that if enough store-level workers want to unionize, they need to hold an election supervised by the National Labor Relations board (NLRB), per current U.S. labor law.

Tesco's Fresh & Easy has said if such an election were called. it would follow the law in carrying out its part of the process.

However, leaders of the employee pro-unionization group who work at the Glassell park neighborhood Fresh & Easy market in Los Angeles said on April 5 they haven't held an election at the store because they're concerned Tesco and Fresh & Easy might not play fair. However, a leader of the group also said on April 5 that they aren't sure if they currently have a majority of votes to go union at the Los Angeles store.

Members of the employee group are working with the UFCW on its "Fix Fresh & Easy" campaign, which is designed to put pressure on Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market's CEO, Tim Mason, who's also Tesco's deputy CEO, and Tesco CEO Philip Clarke, in hope they'll have company representatives sit down with the employees and union representatives to discuss unionizing Fresh & Easy.

The UFCW has been trying  to arrange a formal sit-down with Tesco executives and CEO Tim Mason regarding Fresh & Easy for over three years. Such a meeting hasn't yet happened - and Tesco has made it fairly clear such a meeting won't be coming anytime soon.

Tesco's stores in the United Kingdom, where it's the leading food and grocery retailer, are unionized, as are many of its other divisions in Europe and Asia.

Another Fresh & Easy store worker, Shannon Harding, who works at the Spring Valley store in San Diego, summed up in the statement issued this morning what the workers group says it essentially wants: "Nobody expects to get rich working at a grocery store." But we still deserve decent pay, decent benefits and a real voice in turning this company around. Without those things, Fresh & Easy will never be a success."

Tesco's Fresh & Easy pays store- level workers a starting wage of $10 hour. Other store-level employees, called team leaders (there are generally two-to-four such employees per-store) receive a starting wage of $13 an hour. Assistant managers (one per-store; and not at all stores), which in addition to team leaders are management assistants employed at some of the Fresh & Easy stores, make $15 hour.

There are 20-25 workers per Fresh & Easy store. All of the employees work part-time (20 -to- about 32 hours week), except for the team leaders (some are part-time though), assistant managers and store managers, who are paid a salary.

Unlike unionized grocery store workers at chains like Safeway Stores, Kroger, Albertsons and others, who's pay raise schedule is determined by a multi-year contract agreement between the grocers, the UFCW union and its member-grocery clerks, hourly pay increases, and the amounts of any such increases, for store-level workers at Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market are up to the company, as is the case at all non-union food and grocery retailers, like Walmart, Target, Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe's and others.

Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market offers all store-level employees a medical insurance plan in which its pays 70% -to- 80% of the premium cost. The chain also offers workers a 401k plan with an employer contribution.

Union grocery chain workers in California make different hourly wages depending on their job descriptions in the stores. However, on average, a journey-level (about one year's full time experience) union chain grocery clerk - checks groceries, stock shelves, ect. - makes about $19 hour, and has a very strong employer-union health plan, which includes medical, dental and vision coverage. The workers contribute a portion of the monthly premium costs for the health plan.

Union grocery clerks also get a defined benefit pension depending on years of service, such as 10, 20, 30 years. The unionized chains contribute a significant portion of workers' pension money as part of the employee-retailer union contract agreement, along with a number of other types of benefits. They also pay monthly union dues to the UFCW.

Shannon Harding and the UFCW filed a case against Fresh & Easy with the NLRB in 2010. In June 2010 Administrative Law Judge William Kocol ruled in favor of Harding and the union and against Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market on the majority of complaints brought in the case. [See - June 20, 2010: NLRB Judge Rules Against Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market in Spring Valley CA Store Labor Law Violation Case.

On January 31, 2011, members of the NLRB's board voted to uphold the judge's decision in favor of Harding and the UFCW on the key complaints in the case. (See here.) According to the NLRB the case remains open, meaning a full and final decision is pending.

The Fresh & Easy employee group and the UFCW union have been ratcheting-up their efforts to organize store-level workers at the grocery chain, along with attempting to put greater pressure on Tesco and Fresh & Easy via the "Fix Fresh & Easy" public relations and advertising campaign.

So far the increased organizing, which also now includes efforts by UFCW locals in Northern California where Tesco has thus far opened eight Fresh & Easy markets and is set to open three new stores on April 27, hasn't produced the desired meeting - and based on our information is unlikely to do so anytime in the near future.

However, in light of yesterday's $300 million loss on about $818 million in annual sales - a loss that's about 40% of Fresh & Easy's annual revenues - this increased pressure, particularly from employees of the grocery chain, with the support of the union, comes at a bad time for Tesco CEO Philip Clarke, who inherited Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market's problems when he took over as CEO from Terry Leahy, who's brainchild Fresh & Easy is.

Clarke is on the record as saying Tesco will break-even with its U.S. small-format, convenience-oriented Fresh & Easy chain by the end of its 2012/13 fiscal year, which is just 22 months from now, which as we said in this story - April 19, 2011: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Posts Biggest One-Year Loss Yet - $307 Million Loss on Sales of $818 Million (and have been saying for some time) - is a tall order.

Reader Resource

Readers: See our extensive three plus-year coverage and analysis of the union issue at Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market at (click on) the following links: Fix Fresh and Easy, 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.]

UFCW Union, Activists and Employees Hold Pro-Union Rallies at 25 Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Stores in California

Tesco's Fresh & Easy and the UFCW Union
News/Analysis

The United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, organized labor activists, supporters and employees of Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market yesterday held rallies at 25 Fresh & Easy stores in California, in a show of support for employee organizing at the 171-store Tesco-owned fresh food and grocery chain.

Yesterday was the 43rd anniversary of the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. The rallies at the 25 Fresh & Easy stores in California were part of a national day of action in which U.S. labor unions and supporters organized a variety of different events throughout the nation. Organized labor held the day of action on the 43rd anniversary of the death of Dr. King to draw attention to trade unionism in America, particularly in light of the recent battles over collective bargaining going on in Wisconsin and Ohio between those states Governors and unionized public employees.

The UFCW and its various union locals in California deployed hundreds of activists and supporters to the 25 Fresh & Easy markets - 24 stores in Southern California and one grocery market in Northern California - yesterday afternoon, holding rallies in front of each of the stores. The pro-union activists held signs, passed out informational leaflets to shoppers and rallied the troops with speeches given by union officials local elected officials and pro-union Fresh & Easy store workers

One of the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market store workers who participated in a rally was Lisa Austin, an employee of the Fresh & Easy store at 1000 W. West Covina Parkway in West Covina, California, and one of the leaders of a company-wide group of employees organizing for union representation at the grocery chain. Austin (pictured above) spoke to a crowd outside the West Covina store yesterday about the employee group's efforts to seek union representation at Fresh & Easy. (Behind Lisa Austin is Connie Leyva, president of UFCW local 1428 in Southern California. Leyva also spoke at the store event.)

Another Fresh & Easy store worker, Carlos Juarez, who works at the Fresh & Easy grocery market in Los Angeles' Glassell Park/Eagle Rock neighborhood and is another leader of the pro-union employee group, said at the rally in front of the store where he works: "We stood together for a voice on the job, and Fresh & Easy said 'No', and judges in two states and the National Labor Relations Board (NRLB) have found that Fresh & Easy broke the law by illegally surveilling, threatening and interrogating workers like me who want to form a union."

What Juarez is referring to in the latter part of his statement above is a recent ruling by the NLRB's board on two labor relations cases filed against Tesco's Fresh & Easy last year by store employees and the UFCW. In the cases, Administrative Law Judges ruled in favor of the employees and the union and against Fresh & Easy on the majority of charges or findings brought against the grocery chain.

We reported on the ruling by the two judges in favor of the employees and the union in these two stories last year - March 4, 2010: Administrative Law Judge Finds Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Violated Labor Relations Act in Ex-Store Employee, UFCW Union Complaint>June 20, 2010: NLRB Judge Rules Against Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market in Spring Valley CA Store Labor Law Violation Case.

In the Spring Valley/San Diego store case (June 20, 2010 story linked above) the NLRB's board found on January 31, 2011 that Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market "violated the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) by promulgating and maintaining rules prohibiting employees from talking about the union and discipline, but not other subjects, while working and by implicitly inviting employees to resign because of their protected concerted activities. The finding upheld the thrust of the decision made on June 3, 2010 by Administrative Law Judge William G. Kocol. You can view the board's January 31, 2011 decision here: (21‑CA‑38882, et al.; 356 NLRB No. 90).

Also on January 31 of this year the NLRB's board adopted the Administrative Law Judge's finding in the Las Vegas case (details in the March 4, 2010 story linked above) that the respondent (Fresh & Easy) "violated the NLRA by maintaining an over-broad no-distribution rule, interrogating employees and creating an impression of surveillance.

The NLRB's board also adopted the dismissal of allegations that two discharges violated the NLRA, finding that the respondent (Fresh & Easy) showed that the two employees would have been discharged for lawful reasons even if they had not engaged in protected activity. This was a ruling the judge made in favor of Fresh & Easy. The board upheld the finding.

The Board did not adopt the judge’s finding that the respondent cured its unlawful, company-wide no-distribution rule in September 2009, and therefore found that corporate-wide remedial notice-posting is necessary with respect to that violation. The judge ruled in favor of Fresh & Easy on this charge. However the NLRB's board overruled the judge in favor of the employee and the UFCW. You can view the board's January 31, 2011 decision here: (28-CA-22520, et al.; 356 NLRB No. 85).

The "voice on the job" that Juarez refers to in the first part of his statement has to do with a group of employees at the Eagle Rock/Glassell Park store who've been attempting so far without success to have a meeting with Fresh & Easy's senior human resources executive and/or CEO Tim Mason to discuss the employees' desire to be represented by the UFCW union, as we reported in a series of stories here in Fresh & Easy Buzz.

Tesco and Fresh & Easy's long-stated position is that if employees want to join the union they should call for an election as is stipulated by the National Labor Relations Act. None of the employees at any of the Fresh & Easy stores, in cooperation with the UFCW, has done so to date.

The Glassell Park employees, who at one time said they had a majority of store workers in favor of joining the union, recently said they have no current plans to call for an election at the store.

Juarez was joined by fellow Glassell Park Fresh & Easy store worker Michael Acuna, who's also a leader of the pro-union employee group, and Rabbi Jonathan Klein, who's with Southern California's Clergy & Laity United for Economic Justice group. Rabbi Klein and Acuna also spoke at the rally outside the store. [The three men are pictured in the photograph above. Left-to-right: Rabbi Klein (in suit), Michael Acuna (in the Fresh & Easy shirt) and Carlos Juarez (far right, black shirt).

Explaining why he was attending the event, Rabbi Klein said: "We want Fresh & Easy to know we don’t care how big you are or how much money you have. In our state, in our country, in our community we respect the rights of workers to organize and we stand with Fresh & Easy workers who want a real voice on the job."

Yesterday's pro-union events at the 24 Fresh & Easy stores in Southern California and the Walnut Creek unit in the San Francisco Bay Area (see the list of the 25 stores at the end of this piece) is the largest single day of store-level activity the UFCW has organized at Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market since the first stores were opened in November 2007, based on our coverage of the chain, which began in late 2007.

Late last year we correctly said the UFCW would be intensifying its campaign targeting Fresh & Easy beginning in early 2011, after moderating it considerably in the last half of 2010.

The union has done just that, launching its "Fix Fresh & Easy" public relations and advertising campaign in the beginning of 2011 and expanding it over the last few months, as we've report on here, along with conducting other types of actions targeting Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, which is owned by United Kingdom-based Tesco, the third-largest food and grocery retailer in the world and the UK's market share leader, accounting for a whopping 30% of all food and grocery sales in the nation. Tesco's stores in the UK are unionized.

Additionally, yesterday's rallies at the 25 Fresh & Easy stores marks the beginning of more intense campaigning, organizing and events to come throughout the spring and into the summer, including in Northern California where the grocer has so far this year opened seven stores.

For example, as we reported on March 25 in this story - UFCW Union Local Sets Up Picket Line at Just-Opened Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Store in Modesto, California - Northern California local UFCW 8-Golden State has set up an informational picket line at the Fresh & Easy market in Modesto, California which opened on March 23.

Further, another Northern California local, Local 5, is conducting random informational leafleting at a few of the five Northern California Fresh & Easy stores the grocer has opened thus far this year in the San Francisco Bay Area, such as the store in Pacifica. [See - March 9, 2011: Northern California Launch: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Opens Store in Pacifica Today.]

The increased activity by the UFCW and the group of pro-unionization Fresh & Easy store-level workers come at about the same time United Kingdom-based Tesco is preparing to report its fiscal year 2010/11 financials, including how much the global retailer lost in the fiscal year at its Fresh & Easy USA chain of 171 stores.

We say loss because Tesco has already said it estimates reporting a loss for Fresh & Easy in the $250-$259 million range for the fiscal year, roughly the same amount it lost in the previously 2009/10 fiscal year, despite having a considerable increase in sales, mostly from new stores opened, for the 2010/11 year, which ended in February.

Tesco has a new CEO, former head of European /Asia operations and information technology chief Philip Clarke, who replaced Terry Leahy, who retired last month. Fresh & Easy's CEO Tim Mason, who was also named Tesco group deputy CEO to Clarke in March, is under the gun to get the money-losing U.S. chain to break-even by the end of Tesco's 2012/13 fiscal year, which is about two years away. Based on Fresh & Easy's current performance and strategy, doing so is going to be a tough slog for Clarke, Mason and company.

The increased efforts by the union to organize store-level workers at Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market won't make achieving that goal any easier for Tesco, although the El Segundo, California-based grocer's problems go far beyond a union organizing effort by a group of employees and the UFCW.

The UFCW rally outside the Fresh & Easy store at 1631 Highland Avenue in San Bernardino, California drew a large crowd of activits and supporters for union organizing at Tesco's Fresh & Easy.

The union issue is compounded by the fact that the current contract between the UFCW locals in Southern California and the regions unionized grocery chains, which include the four market share-leading grocer's in Southern California - Kroger's Ralphs, Safeway's Vons, Albertsons and Stater Bros - has expired.

The chains and their respective unionized workers are working on a day-to-day basis under the old contract. Either party has the right to terminate the day-to-day arrangement by giving the other party 72-hours notice.

As of today, no progress has been made in negotiations between the UFCW and Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons, which is owned by Supervalu, Inc. Stater Bros. is negotiating with the union separately, as is local chain Gelsons.

In fact, the three chains only submitted their first proposal to the UFCW on March 29. The Southern California union locals have essentially pronounced the proposal, which includes various "givebacks" involving premium-type (holidays, Sundays, ect.) wages and benefits, dead on arrival. Already some of the unions are telling employees that a strike vote may have to be made if progress isn't made in the next couple weeks, for example.

The UFCW is under pressure as part of the contract talks because the unionized chains say they are losing market share to non-union chains like Walmart, Target, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods Market, Sprouts Farmers Market and Fresh & Easy, which is true. As a result, expect to see intensified organizing by the UFCW not only vis-a-vis Tesco's Fresh & Easy but also involving a couple of the other chains noted above.

One of the more aggressive UFCW union local presidents in Southern California is Connie Leyva (pictured above in front of the West Covina Fresh & Easy store and behind store employee Lisa Austin in the earlier photo), who's also the president of the California Labor Federation, the highly politically connected umbrella organization for organized labor in the Golden State.

Governor Jerry Brown is counting on the Federation's support for his budget balancing plan and on other issues, for example.

Additionally, organized labor is also a crucial supporter of Democrats in California, which hold a majority in both the State Assembly and State Senate. Assembly Speaker John Perez is a former official with the UFCW union.

Leyva attended the rally at the West Covina store yesterday and had strong words for Tesco and Fresh & Easy's senior management, saying: "When Dr. King passed away, he was standing up for striking workers in Memphis. We honor his memory today by standing with organizing workers at Fresh & Easy and saying our communities support and honor the right to organize."

For the UFCW union and the pro-union Fresh & Easy store employees however, the bottom line is that until they can hold an win an election at one of the grocer's 171 stores, the probability of becoming unionized is as close to zero as can be had. Tesco has no interest in talking with the UFCW about becoming a union shop, evidenced not only by our source information but by the fact the union has been asking its and Fresh & Easy's senior executives to do so for four years.

We don't see such an election happening at any Fresh & Easy store this year. Therefore the employees' and union's thrust will continue to be through public relations, advertising, picketing and events like the action held yesterday at the 25 stores in California. In other words, don't look for a resolution to the Fresh & Easy-union issue anytime soon.

Union activists and supporters rally outside of the Fresh & Easy store in Spring Valley/San Diego yesterday.

Below are the locations of the 25 Fresh & Easy stores where the rallies took place yesterday:

Alhambra - 2121 W. Main St.
Buena Park - 7880 Valley View St.
Burbank - 1615 W. Verdugo Ave.
Compton - 2175 W. Rosecrans Ave.
Glassell Park/Eagle Rock - 4211 Eagle Rock Blvd.
Fullerton - 1207 S Euclid
Harbor City - 26640 Western Ave, Suite E
Hollywood - 7021 Hollywood Blvd.
Lakewood - 4930 Paramount Blvd.
Lakewood - 5615 Woodruff Ave.
Manhattan Beach - 1700 Rosecrans Ave.
Northridge - 19350 Nordoff St.
Orange - 1803 E Chapman
Paramount - 15727 Downey Ave.
Pico Rivera - 8921 Washington Blvd.
Rancho Cucamonga - 8956 Foothill Blvd.
Rancho Cucamonga - 12188 Foothill Blvd.
Rancho Cucamonga - 829 W Foothill, Upland
Rialto - 2015 N Riverside Ave
San Bernardino - 1631 E Highland Ave
Spring Valley/San Diego - 96655 Campo Rd.
Van Nuys - 15230 Vanowen St.
Vista - 945 E Vista Pkwy
Walnut Creek - 1821 Ygnacio Valley Rd.
West Covina - 1000 W. West Covina Pkwy

Related Stories

[Readers: See our extensive coverage and analysis of the union issue at Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market at (click on) the following links: Fix Fresh and Easy, 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.]

UFCW Union Local Sets Up Picket Line at Just-Opened Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Store in Modesto, California

The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union's UFCW 8-Golden State local, which represents unionized grocery store workers in parts of Northern California and in the Central Valley, today established an informational picket line at the Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market store in the Oakmore Plaza shopping center at 1717 Oakdale Road in Modesto, California, pictured below on opening day, Wednesday, March 23. [See - March 23, 2011: Tesco Opens First Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Store in California's Northern Central Valley Today - in Modesto; and March 19, 2011: Preview: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is Headed to Save Mart Supermarket's Hometown of Modesto.]

The picket line is and will be in front of the store, near the intersection of Oakdale Road and East Briggsmore Avenue, according to Jacques Loveall, the President of UFCW 8-Golden State.

A Fresh & Easy Buzz correspondent visited the store today and talked with the UFCW union picketers who were out front. They told our correspondent they will be at the store this weekend, when the Tesco owned non-union grocer continues its grand opening at the first Fresh & Easy market in Modesto.

Among the special activities planned at the Oakdale Road Fresh & Easy store this weekend include: food sampling, music, giveaways, and balloon artists and face painting for the kids. El Segundo, California-based Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market has been offering these activities at the seven fresh food and grocery markets it's opened so far this year in Northern California.

The informational picket line at the Modesto store is a continuation of what UFCW 8-Golden State has been doing at selected Fresh & Easy stores in the Fresno and Bakersfield metro regions in the Central Valley. Members of the local have been staffing the picket lines at many of the 14 stores in the two metro areas (seven stores in each respective region) on a regular basis since the first units were opened in Bakersfield an Fresno. [For example, see - January 14, 2010: UFCW Union Launches Informal Boycott of Fresno CA Fresh & Easy Stores Today; One Day After the Stores Open.]

UFCW 8-Golden State doesn't represent unionized grocery store employees in the San Francisco Bay Area, where the majority of the seven Fresh & Easy stores opened thus far are located.

Union grocery store workers in the Bay Area region are represented by UFCW Local 5, which has had informational picketers at some of the Bay Area stores but not at every store every day. [For example, see - March 9, 2011: Northern California Launch: Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Opens Store in Pacifica Today. However, Local 5 is gearing up for a major effort targeting Fresh & Easy store workers in the Bay Area, according to our sources.

We first reported in 2010 that this would occur when the first Fresh & Easy markets opened in Northern California in 2011.

We also reported last year that once Fresh & Easy opened its first store in Modesto, which is the grocer's first unit in the Northern Central Valley, UFCW 8-Golden State would establish an informational picket line at the store right away. The Modesto store opened on Wednesday. The union local established its informational picket line today, two days later.

The UFCW union has been trying to organize Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market store-level workers since the first stores were opened in November 2007.

This year is a big one for the UFCW union and unionized grocers in California: The union's contracts in both Southern and Northern California expire in 2011.

Contract negotiations have already started between the UFCW locals in Southern California and the region's top-four unionized chains - Kroger-owned Ralphs, Safeway's Vons, Albertsons and Stater Bros. -where the current contract now has expired.

Later this year the Northern California union locals will begin contract negotiations with the region's "big three" unionized chains: Safeway Stores, Save Mart Supermarkets and Raley's.

The way the negotiations work is that once contract agreements are reached between the union and the major chains listed above, the state's other smaller, unionized chains and independents adopt essentially the same contract.

Although the current union-retailer contact in Southern California has already expired, the UFCW and the region's "big four" chains agreed earlier this month to continue working under the existing contract until the end of this month, as they continue negotiations. At the end of March, if the union and the four grocery chains don't reach agreement on a new contract - which seems likely will be the case - the two parties could extend the period in which employees would continue to work under the terms of the old contract. Or, the UFCW and its members could decide to strike, which neither party at present wants to see happen, according to both UFCW representatives and sources we've recently talked to at the chains.

The market share-leading grocers in Modesto are union. For example, the two leading food retailers in Modesto, Save Mart Supermarkets, which is headquartered in the city of 205,000, and Raley's, which is based in nearby West Sacramento, are both unionized and UFCW affiliated.

Save Mart has seven stores in its hometown of Modesto - five Save Mart banner supermarkets, one Food Maxx discount warehouse store and a Maxx Value Foods discount supermarket. Raley's has four union markets in the city.

Both Save Mart and Raley's have union supermarkets located about a half mile from the Fresh & Easy store at 1717 Oakdale Road, where the UFCW local has set up the picket line.

Another Modesto-based chain, 8-store Cost Less Foods, is also union. Cost Less has three stores in Modesto. Safeway, which has just one supermarket in Modesto, is also union.

The seven Save Mart, four Raley's, three Cost Less stores and Safeway store represent about 55 60% of total food and grocery sales in Modesto, according to our research.

The major non-union food and grocery stores in Modesto are: Walmart (a supercenter and a discount format store), Trader Joe's (one unit), Winco Foods (one store), Grocery Outlet (one store) and the Fresh & Easy market at 1717 Oakdale Road. There are also a number of unionized and non-unionized independents in Modesto.

The reactions by shoppers to the UFCW union's pickets at the Fresno and Bakersfield stores have been a mixed bag. Some consumers have stopped shopping at the stores at the urging of the union representatives. But, based on our multi-year research and reporting, the picketing hasn't been a key deciding factor regarding why consumers have chosen or not chosen to shop at the Fresh & Easy stores in the two Central Valley regions. What we've found instead is that in making their decisions to shop at Fresh & Easy in the regions, basic criteria - service, price, selection - are at the top of the list, while the union issue is either far down in the decision-making process or not on shoppers the criteria list at all.

Save Mart Supermarkets is headquartered in Modesto and the chain's majority owner, chairman and CEO, Bob Piccinnini, lives in the city, where the grocer is one of the city's major employers and leading contributor of money and other efforts to the community - along with the fact Save Mart is the second-largest chain in Northern California and one of the "big three" the union has to negotiate with this year - there's a significant amount of pressure on UFCW 8-Golden State to keep pressure on non-union Fresh & Easy, which has three other stores planned in Modesto and next door Ceres.

Just like he said back when the Fresh & Easy stores opened in Fresno and Bakersfield, UFCW 8 Golden State President Loveall says the union local is asking the public not to shop at Fresh & Easy and to shop instead at unionized grocery stores in Modesto, such as those operated by Save Mart, Raley’s, Safeway, Food Maxx, Maxx Value, Cost Less and Rite Aid.

Further, as he said when Tesco-owned Fresh & Easy opened in Bakersfield and Fresno, Laveall has strong words about the chain, saying: "Tesco, which is Fresh & Easy’s parent company in the United Kingdom, is siphoning money out of our community. We are responding to that provocation. California has enough challenges without a foreign company coming in with substandard jobs that threaten good, local companies that bring value and good jobs to our community. It’s bad enough good American jobs are exported overseas at an alarming rate, now this global giant from the UK is coming to our country thinking they can take advantage of American workers on our own turf. We will not allow that to happen."

Tesco's Fresh & Easy has created about 2,800 jobs in its 122 California stores since November 2007, including about 162 positions at the seven stores it's opened in Northern California so far. Fresh & Easy has also created additional new jobs at its corporate headquarters in El Segundo, California and at its distribution center campus in Riverside County.

Tesco currently operates 171 Fresh & Easy stores in California, Nevada and Arizona. Each Fresh & Easy store employs 20-25 workers. All the store-level employees are part-time, accept for the store manager and in some cases the store team leads (like an assistant manager). Starting pay for non management employees at the stores is $10 hour. Tesco's Fresh & Easy pays 80% of the medical insurance premiums for all store-level employees who work 20 hours or more a week. Most workers work 20-32 hours a week, depending on the store location. The retailer also offers a 401k retirement program with a company match.

As we reported yesterday, Colorado and Arizona-based Sunflower Farmers Market, which like Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is non-union, is opening a store in Modesto in October of this year. [See - March 24, 2011: Sunflower Farmers Market is Headed to Modesto as Part of Northern California Push.]

Sunflower, which operates 33 stores in Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and Nevada, plans to open its first store in California in May. That store will be in Roseville, near Sacramento. We expect the UFCW union to add Sunflower Farmers Market to its list of non-union stores it wants to unionize.

But so far the UFCW has had no success unionizing Walmart, Trader Joe's, Whole Foods Market, Target, Sprouts Farmers Market and Tesco's Fresh & Easy, all which are non-union and all which are among the fastest growing food retailers in California.

And, you can bank on this: These fast-growing non-union food retailers and the pressures they're putting on the union supermarkets is a topic at the top of the "big four" chains' discussion list in the contract negotiations currently going on between the UFCW union locals and the grocers in Southern California, as it will be later this year when contract negotiations begin in Northern California between the UFCW and the region's "big three" unionized chains.

Related Stories

>Read our extensive reporting and analysis on the UFCW union-Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market topic and issue at the following (click on) links - UFCW, UFCW Tesco Fresh and Easy Campaign, UFCW union, union food retailing USA.

>Click on the following links - Fresh and Easy Modesto CA, Fresh and Easy Northern California, Modesto California market, Northern California Market Region, Raleys, Save Mart, Tesco's Fresh and Easy in Norcal 2011 - for related stories about Fresh & Easy in Northern California.

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.

UFCW Union Launches New 'Fix Fresh & Easy' Neighborhood Market Website and Social Media-Based Campaign

The UFCW union has created the video above, which it calls: "An xtranormal conversation at Fresh & Easy headquarters," as part of its new Fix Fresh & Easy social media-based campaign. The brief video features the Robot Theater robots, the voices of which you may have heard before.

Breaking Buzz

[Related Story - December 20, 2010: Glassell Park-Los Angeles Store Workers Catalysts of New UFCW Campaign to Unionize Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market]

The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union today launched a new website and social media-based campaign called Fix Fresh & Easy as part of its efforts to unionize store workers at Tesco's 155 Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market food and grocery stores in California, Nevada and Arizona.

The new Fix Fresh & Easy website, along with a companion Facebook page, Twitter.com feed and YouTube channel, will focus on what the union believes to be wrong with how Fresh & Easy is operated, along with suggesting ways in which it thinks those problems can be "fixed."

We first learned about the new website and companion social media sites this morning, when we discovered the Fix Fresh & Easy Twitter feed had followed our Fresh & Easy Buzz feed on Twitter.com. (You can view our Twitter.com feed here on the blog, at the top, right.)

This morning the UFCW also posted a December 15, 2010 story from Fresh & Easy Buzz - Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market's California WIC Voucher Expansion Program Stalled - as the second entry on its new Fix Fresh & Easy website, along with posting the piece on the two social media sites, with a caption saying: "Here's an easy way to fix Fresh & Easy. Accept WIC at all your locations - it's good for our community and brings in more revenue to your stores."

The premise of "Fix Fresh & Easy" is to use the various online sites to suggest ways in which Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market can be "fixed," with the central way obviously being to unionize the chain, since that's the UFCW's goal and overall objective.

The "fix or improve fresh & easy" angle is a new strategy for the UFCW in its efforts to unionize the grocer's store-level employees in California, Nevada and Arizona.

For example, in 2007 (the first Fresh & Easy stores opened in November 2007) the UFCW, which represents about 1.3 million unionized grocery store and related industry workers in the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico, launched a website called fresh & easy facts, in which it asks consumers to pledge not to shop at Tesco's Fresh & Easy stores because they are non-union, along with offering information as to why people shouldn't shop at the stores.

The website still exists (click here) but hasn't been updated since June 2008. For example, that's when the last article about Tesco was posted in the website's news section. Other sections of the site haven't been updated for a similar amount of time.

The tact of the new Fix Fresh & Easy website however is much different.

We're told the UFCW plans to use the site to point out various problems with how Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, which continues to lose hundreds of millions of dollars annually, is operated, and to offer ways those problems can be "fixed." Readers of Fresh & Easy Buzz, which is and independent publication and isn't affiliated with the UFCW, Tesco or any other business or organization, know we have and continue to point out those many problems, often offering prescriptions for improvement, in our analysis and commentary-focused pieces in the blog.

The Fix Fresh & Easy website posting of our story about Fresh & Easy's stalled expansion of its acceptance of WIC Vouchers beyond one store, with the UFCW's caption that if the grocer accepted WIC at all its stores it not only would not only be good for the communities it serves but also good for added sales, is suggestive of the "fix" focus the UFCW plans to take with the new tactic and online sites.

If so, and we're told it is the case, it signals a change in strategy for the grocery clerks' union, in that it has decided to combine what could be a more positive, consultative approach with the use of the more traditional organizing and public relations tactics it's thus far used in its attempt to unionize Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market.

The new Fix Fresh & Easy website and companion social media sites come at a key time for both the UFCW and Tesco's Fresh & Easy. Tesco is preparing to launch its U.S. fresh food and grocery chain into Northern California early next year. The region, particularly the San Francisco Bay Area, has among the strongest and most aggressive food and grocery retailing locals in the United States.

These Northern California UFCW locals, as we've reported and discussed in the blog before, are planning a major campaign and organizing drive targeted at non-union Fresh & Easy beginning in early 2011, about a month or so before the first batch of 12 stores are set to open. Ten of the 12 stores are in the San Francisco Bay Area, as we've previously reported. The other two units are in nearby Vacaville and Modesto.

We've also recently learned the UFCW plans to ramp-up its overall campaign and store-level organizing efforts to unionize Fresh & Easy's store-level workers, starting early next year.

The main focus of the new efforts will be in California. But increased efforts will also take place in the metro Las Vegas, Nevada and metro Phoenix, Arizona regions, where the other Fresh & Easy markets are located. There are currently 106 Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market stores in California (Southern California and the Bakersfield and Fresno regions in the Central Valley), 28 units in metro Phoenix and 21 markets in metro Las Vegas, for a total of 155 stores.

According to sources, the new Fix Fresh & Easy website and companion social media sites will be an integral part of the UFCW's store-level employee organizational efforts and overall campaign to unionize Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market in 2011.

Stay tuned.

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.

The Daily Show Catches Las Vegas-Based UFCW Union Local 711 In Labor Relations 'Catch 22'

Las Vegas Metro Market Report

Not only is the 'The Daily Show With John Stewart' one of the most popular comedy shows on television, it also breaks as much or more real news than its non-competitors, the broadcast network and cable news programs, do. And Stewart and his team of enterprising "reporters" do what they do in an equal opportunity way: No person or organization - left, right or center - is exempt from their in-depth investigations.

Recently, The Daily Show's "investigative reporter," Aasif Mandvi, turned his very real but comedy-inspired reportage to an organization we write about frequently in Fresh & Easy Buzz, the United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) union, which is engaged in a campaign to organize store workers at Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, Walmart and a number of other non-union U.S. food and grocery retailing chains.

Specifically, Mandvi did a report on Las Vegas-based UFCW Local 711, which in addition to currently attempting to organize store workers at Tesco's 27 Fresh & Easy grocery stores in the Las Vegas metropolitan region, is also conducting a major campaign to organize and unionize Walmart store workers in the region.

As part of its Walmart employee organizing and unionization campaign in the Las Vegas region, the UFCW Local 711 has hired numerous non-union, temporary workers, who are all being paid minimum wage, to march, protest and picket near various Walmart stores in metro Las Vegas.

The Daily Show's Mandvi recently investigated the activity and campaign. His report,'Working Stiffed,' which appeared on the show in late September, features an interview with UFCW Local 711's Secretary-Treasurer, Michael Gittings, along with some of the temp workers out on the front lines.

You can watch the video here. It's "Must See TV," including for UFCW members who have a sense of humor.

'Human Rights Watch' Calls Tesco and its Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market 'Labor Rights Violator' in the USA

Pictured above is Tesco plc director and Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market USA CEO Tim Mason. Mason came to America in 2006 to start up Fresh & Easy for Tesco as the CEO. The first stores openened in November 2007. Prior to coming the the U.S., he was director of marketing for Tesco, at its global corporate headquarters in the United Kingdom. In March, 2011, Mason will be given the title of Co-CEO of Tesco plc, although the company says he will remain in California as CEO of Fresh & Easy. See here.

News & Analysis

The New York City-based human rights watchdog group Human Rights Watch issued a blistering report today that singles out United Kingdom-based Tesco and its Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market USA as one of a handful of European companies doing business in the U.S. that have been "carrying out aggressive campaigns to keep their employees in the United States from organizing and bargaining, violating international standards and, often, US labor laws."

The charge by Human Rights Watch comes amidst a now three year campaign by the United Food & Commercial Workers union (UFCW) to organize store-level employees at Tesco's Fresh & Easy, which has 159 stores in California (Southern and the Central Valley); Metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona; and in Nevada's Las Vegas Metro region.

"Many European companies that publicly embrace workers' rights under global labor standards nevertheless undermine workers' rights in their U.S. operations, a Human Rights Watch spokesperson says. Tesco [with Fresh & Easy] is one of those European companies."

The 130-page report, "A Strange Case: Violations of Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States by European Multinational Corporations," goes into some detail, quoting a few former Tesco Fresh & Easy employees.

For example, Shasta Furman, a former worker at a Tesco Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market store in San Diego, says in the report: "It was constantly driven home to us in team-lead meetings that we should tell employees they have no need for the union, that the company will take care of them so they don't need a union. When the union started passing out flyers outside our store, my manager told us 'You don't want to be part of it. These are not the right people for you.'"

Another former Fresh & Easy San Diego store employee, team leader (assistant manager) Fred Baquet, told Human Rights Watch in an interview for the report: "We had lots of issues. The time sheets were confusing. They had us working through breaks and lunch. People lost a lot of money. I would bring up people's pay problems and management would tell me to tell them... 'If you don't like it, there's the door.' People came to me with complaints and I told them, 'My job's on the line, too.' The managers were always preaching 'no union' to us. Anything union was unmentionable because it could cost you your job."

Human Rights Watch says today's report is based on interviews with workers, employees' legal testimonies, findings of US arbitration panels, company documents, and written exchanges with company management. The report is part of the human rights group's efforts to further strengthen and promote labor laws in the U.S, which it argues are designed to allow employers to side-step human rights conventions and prevent unions from organizing workers.

Along with United Kingdom-based Tesco, which owns and operates El-Segundo, California-based Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market, the following European companies doing business in the U.S. are named in the report: Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile; Deutsche Post and DHL Express; mSaint-Gobain; Sodexo; Group 4 Securicor PLC; Kongsberg Automotive100; Gamma Holding and National Wire Fabric107; Siemens115.

"The behavior of these companies, including Tesco's Fresh & Easy, casts serious doubt on the value of voluntary commitments to human rights," says Arvind Ganesan, director of the Business and Human Rights Program at Human Rights Watch. "Companies need to be held accountable, to their own stated commitments and to strong legal standards."

Among the violations Human Rights Watch says it documents in the report are "practices of forcing workers into 'captive audience' meetings to hear anti-union harangues while prohibiting pro-union voices, threatening dire consequences if workers form unions, threatening to permanently replace workers who exercise the right to strike, spying on employee organizers, and even firing workers who support organizing efforts at companies."

Human Rights Watch says this about Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market USA: Fresh & Easy "has created an anti-union atmosphere, and employees who want to organize union activities live in fear for their jobs."

Here are links to two responses to Human Rights Watch from Tesco regarding the organization's claims and report: Response from Tescoto HRW 7-26-2010 and Response from Tesco to HRW10-22-09.

Tesco said today in a statement about the report, which singles out its Fresh & Easy chain as a human rights violator when it comes to labor relations: "Wherever we operate, all staff are free to join trade unions and we have positive relations with trade unions around the world...This report is a further example of misleading allegations being used to misrepresent our position."

In describing the methodology behind its report, Human Rights Watch says: "The Human Rights Watch report is based on thirty interviews with workers and employees' testimony in legal proceedings, findings and decisions of US labor law authorities, company documents, and written exchanges with company management.

Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market has lost two cases in National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) hearings before Administrative Law Court Judges this year, in which employees and the UFCW union charged the grocery chain with violations of the U.S. Labor Relations Act. Fresh & Easy Buzz reported on both of these cases. In fact, Human Rights Watch sites those two cases as the primary basis for its arguments in today's report. (See here.)

Read the two stories linked below:

>March 4, 2010: Administrative Law Judge Finds Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Violated Labor Relations Act in Ex-Store Employee, UFCW Union Complaint

>June 20, 2010: NLRB Judge Rules Against Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market in Spring Valley CA Store Labor Law Violation Case

A couple months ago, Tesco bought out its meat suppler for Fresh & Easy, 2 Sisters Food Group. The buyout came shortly after an Administrative Law Judge found 2 Sisters Food Group, which was an independent company that had no ownership affiliation with Tesco or Tesco's Fresh & Easy, in violation of U.S. labor laws in a case involving its firing of six employees over the issue of a union vote at the meat plant. Read our June report: June 20, 2010 NLRB Judge Rules Against Key Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Supplier '2 Sisters Food Group' in Labor Relations Violations Case. Also see: June 21, 2010: The Missing Link in Tesco's Purchase of Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Meat Supplier '2 Sisters Food Group.'

Tesco brought 2 Sisters Food Group's (its major meat product supplier in the UK) along with it in 2006-2007, when it set up shop in Southern California for Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market. A couple months ago Tesco bought out 2 Sisters Food Group, along with its produce supplier for Fresh & Easy, Wild Rocket, for what Tesco director and Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market CEO Tim Mason will only say was "tens of millions" of dollars.

Fresh & Easy Buzz has been closely covering the UFCW union/Tesco Fresh & Easy labor issue for nearly three years. We written reported extensively on the topic, along with offering much analysis. [Click here, here and here for a selection of our stories on the topic/issue. Use the older link at the bottom of the linked page for additional stories and pages.]

In our analysis, it's too early to know the affect today's Human Rights Watch report will have on Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market. However, the human rights group is respected, and counts among its members numerous influential opinion leaders from various walks of like, including many who live in California, where Fresh & Easy is headquartered and has 98 of its current 159 stores. (Thirty four stores are in Metro Phoenix; 27 in Metro Las Vegas.)

We do see the report, and the Human Rights Watch support, as giving the UFCW's on-going efforts to organize Fresh & Easy employees a boost. The union will now be able to point to the human rights group as a respected independent source which agrees with what the union has been arguing about Tesco's Fresh & Easy since 2007, which is that it will do whatever it takes to remain non-union, a charge Tesco has denied is true.

But approval of labor unions by U.S. consumers is at a near all time low, according to Gallup, the leading U.S. polling firm.

A slim majority of 52% of Americans say they approve of labor unions, the second lowest approval rating in Gallup's 70-year history of polling on the topic, behind only last year's 48%, the polling firm found in a poll taken this month (August 5-8, 2010).

Gallup says it first asked Americans to evaluate labor unions in 1936, at which time 72% approved. The all-time high of 75% approval came in 1953 and 1957 surveys. Support for unions declined in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but mostly hovered around the 60% mark until last year, when it dropped below the majority level for the first time, according to the polling firm.

In the August, 2010 poll, 10% of Americans identify themselves as union members, and an additional 6% say another member of their household belongs to a union. Seventy-two percent of Americans who are union members or live in a union household approve of unions, compared with 48% of those in non-union households.

Union approval varies widely by political party affiliation - It's 71% among Democrats compared with 34% of Republicans and 49% among independents. All three party groups expressed their lowest approval of unions last year and, although views improved slightly, they remain less positive than before.

Gallup finds significantly more Americans saying they want labor unions to have less (40%) rather than more (29%) influence than they have today. Twenty-seven percent say their influence should stay about the same.

Prior to last year, Americans were about equally divided in saying they wanted labor unions to have more versus less influence, or showed a tendency toward wanting unions to have more influence.

Regardless of their preference, Americans by a nearly 2-to-1 margin predict union influence will decline in the future. The poll finds 46% of Americans saying unions will become weaker in the future compared with 25% who say stronger. This general pattern has held each time Gallup has asked the question since 1999.

Gallup adds a slight caveat to the poll results however: "Labor unions are less popular now in the United States than they have been for most of the last 70 years. One reason for this could be the economic downturn. With many Americans out of work and struggling to find work, organized labor groups' missions may not seem appropriate or even fair as they might have when jobs are more plentiful. There is some precedence for an economic-related downturn in union approval, as Gallup found a mild drop in union approval during the late 1970s and early 1980s when the U.S. economy was in poor shape."

Additionally, "The more negative appraisal of unions the last two years could be due to the belief from union opponents that unions are likely to benefit or are benefiting from the policies of the Obama administration, including recent legislation providing aid to states that will preserve thousands of education and public sector jobs," Gallup adds about the poll's results.

Fresh & Easy Buzz doesn't put its stock in one poll. However, numerous other polls reflect opinions similar to what Gallup found this month.

But it's important to not lump all unions into the same pile. For example, in California the UFCW union is very strong. The state's top grocery chains - Kroger (Ralphs/Food 4 Less), Safeway/Vons, Albertsons, Stater Bros., Save Mart, Raley's and numerous others, as well as many multi and even single-store independents - are unionized. These grocers represent the majority of groceries sold in California annually from a market share perspective.

The UFCW is a fairly popular union in California overall. This is evidenced in the level of support union-store employees tend to get from shoppers whenever they've gone out on strike over contract issues with the chains. Although we've seen the level of popularity wane a bit over the last decade.

But, on the other hand, the fastest-growing food and grocery retailers in California - and in most parts of the U.S. - are non-union. These include Walmart, which is now the number one grocery retailer in America, Costco (it has some union affiliation in Northern California), Target, Whole Foods Market, Trader Joe's, Sprouts Farmers Market, Henry's Farmers Market, Tesco's Fresh & Easy, and a couple others.

The UFCW hasn't been able to unionize any of the fast-growing chains mentioned above, even though in some instances - Walmart particularly - it been trying to do so for over a decade.

The less than enthusiastic opinion of labor unions does help Tesco in its battle with the UFCW, although it is a relative form of help. For example, with two Administrative Law Judges finding Tesco's Fresh & Easy in violation of U.S. labor law so far this year - and we're told more cases are going to be brought to the NLRB by current and former Fresh & Easy employees together with the UFCW - the grocer is giving its opposition a lot of ammunition.

Right now, the store to watch in terms of union organization and activity at Tesco's Fresh & Easy is its unit at 4211 Eagle Rock Boulevard, in the Glassell Park neighborhood in northeast Los Angeles.

As we recently reported in this story - July 24, 2010: Employees at the Glassell Park-Eagle Rock Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Store in Los Angeles Seeking Union Recognition From Tesco - A group of employees recently told Fresh & Easy Buzz they have or are close to having a majority of store workers in agreement that they want to join the United Foods & Commercial Workers (UFCW) union.

Some of the store's employees met with Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market executives at corporate headquarters in El Segundo, California on March 26, and requested to be recognized as a union store, as we reported in the July piece linked above. Tesco has thus far denied the Glassell Park store workers' request, which isn't uncommon for a company to do.

You can read the full report issued today by Human Rights Watch, "A Strange Case: Violations of Workers' Freedom of Association in the United States by European Multinational Corporations," here.