Company's new package drastically cuts jobs, health insurance and pension benefits

South Easton, Mass.– The United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 791 announced today that Shaw's Supermarkets rejected the union's contract offer and countered with a very regressive proposal that is significantly worse than their two previous packages.  With no agreement reached, the strike at the Shaw's Methuen Perishable Distribution Center is in its ninth week.  Local 791 has filed an unfair labor practice against Shaw's with the National Labor Relations Board stating the company is bargaining in "bad faith."

The two parties met with a federal mediator on Sunday, May 2, 2010, at the Holiday Inn Mansfield Massachusetts.  "In an effort to end this strike, the union made significant movement in our contract offer but was flatly rejected by Shaw's," said union spokesman Peter Derouen. 

Instead of bargaining in good faith to reach an agreement, the company proposed a new package, after having withdrawn their two previous proposals.  In addition to providing for drastic wages decreases, the new offer takes away the workers' health care plan, the pension plan for new employees, seniority rights, and also contains measures that would result in the loss of jobs. 

The entire package is conditioned on a number of things: the replacement workers stay in the facility, meaning that more bargaining unit employees will lose their jobs. Shaw's also stated their intention of moving the meat and deli work out of the Methuen facility and subcontracting it to C & S Wholesalers, which will reduce the work performed by bargaining unit employees by 50 percent.

"The new offer the company made is incredibly outrageous.  The proposal yesterday continues this bad faith bargaining and kicks it up a notch, making the company's real intentions -- to punish employees for exercising their right to strike and to bust the union -- even more obvious," said Derouen.

Since the onset of the strike nearly two months ago, concerned citizens, political, religious, labor and community leaders from across New England have expressed their support for the striking Methuen workers, and have called on the company to bargain in good faith so their workers can go back to work. After the company's regressive proposal yesterday, supporters of the Methuen workers are vowing to continue the fight until Shaw's and its parent company —Supervalu— agree to a decent and fair proposal.

"Shaw's latest proposal demonstrates that the company had no intention in the first place of reaching an agreement with the workers," said Russ Davis, Executive Director of Massachusetts Jobs With Justice. "Clearly, Shaw's is using health care as a weapon to punish their workers for standing up. Such behavior is unconscionable because it lowers standards in our communities and that should not be tolerated," Davis added.

UFCW Local 791 represents approximately 5,500 members in 36 Shaw's Supermarkets in Massachusetts and Rhode Island as well as distribution centers in Methuen, Massachusetts and Wells, Maine.