By Jesse Russell

A potential of a long dreaded grocery worker strike has been averted in Northern California. 25,000 workers were set to walk off the job at Safeway Supermakerts if contract negotiations broke down. The company agreed to a new four-year contract with the union. According to a press release from UFCW local 8 President Jacques Loveall the agreement amounts to substantial ''pay increases, avoids employee premiums for medical benefits and protects pension and benefits." The contract was approved one day after the previous contract expired.

After 36 years, management at Kroger grocery stores could be bagging groceries once again. Jesse Russell reports:

The 11,000 members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1099 are prepared to walk off the job at midnight on Friday if there is no new movement in contract talks. The union represents workers at Kroger grocery stores in Greater Cincinnati, Dayton, Ohio, and northern Kentucky and are at a stalemate with the company over health care, wages, and pensions. The union is standing strong on a demand for a fully funded pension plan, one of the bigger issues holding up contract negotiations.

By Doug Cunningham

The United Food and Commercial Workers says it won’t be bullied by a lawsuit filed against the union by Smithfield Foods. The suit accuses the union of conducting a public smear campaign to injure Smithfield economically with the goal of getting the company to recognize the union. The UFCW says the suit is baseless. The union for years has waged a union organizing campaign at Smithfield. The UFCW says it’s well documented that Smithfield has abused the law in its treatment of workers for more than a decade. The UFCW says Smithfield is using what it calls this frivolou

By Doug Cunningham

Smithfield Foods has broken off talks with the United Food And Commercial Workers union on finding a fair and free process for workers to vote for a union. Pro-union workers there say they’re disappointed by the company’s action. The workers say thousands of them signed petitions asking for union representation without the company threats and abuses of past union elections.

By Doug Cunningham

The United Steel Workers says almost 9,000 retirees, spouses and surviving spouses will get lump-sum payments of up to $600 this year from a health benefits trust fund. The fund was established for former employees of Kaiser Aluminum when Kaiser went bankrupt. The benefit is about equal to $50 monthly Medicare Part B premiums. The trust fund was set up in 2004 to restore prescription drug coverage for Medicare-eligible retirees. The retirees were represented by the USW, the UAW, United Food and Commercial Workers and the International Association of Machinists.

By Doug Cunningham

The UFCW sponsored a Town Hall Forum on immigration issues in Chicago that was critical of the way the federal immigration enforcement agency, known as ICE, conducts workplace raids. Sonia Mendoza is a U.S. citizen rounded up by ICE at Swift and Company in Texas. She says hundreds of workers were held incommunicado without being able to eat, call family or go to bathrooms.

{Mendoza]: “We understand that ICE agents, you know, they have to do their job. Why did they have to herd us up like cattle, just sit there? We were like cattle in a cattle pen, because we couldn’t get out, we couldn’t drink water, we couldn’t do nothing.”

By Doug Cunningham

The United Food and Commercial Workers is suing the government to block mass workplace immigration raids the union says violated the rights of thousands of U.S. citizen workers. UFCW spokesman Scott Frotman.

[Frotman]: "They held and detained U.S. citizens for hours on end, depriving them of access to attorneys, depriving them of access to bathrooms, depriving them of access to phones to call their families."

The UFCW wants an injunction blocking the kinds of workplace immigration raids that happened at Swift & Company in December, when more than 10,000 documented U.S. citizens were forcibly held for hours at work.

By Doug Cunningham

Hundreds of workers joined by celebrities and a variety of social change organizations are bringing petitions to Smithfield Foods' shareholders meeting today. They're asking to meet with the company to work out a fair process to let workers choose whether or not they want a union. Terry Slaughter is a worker at Smithfield's Tar Heel, North Carolina hog processing plant.

[Slaughter]: "We just want to be heard. We really want to actually talk to these people. We want to get into a conversation where we can actually tell them what we feel, how it goes on. Because they're not even tryin' to hear us. They really don't care about the workers who are making the money for them. These people out there are killin' themselves for Smithfield and they're getting nothing in return."

By Doug Cunningham

The United Food And Commercial Workers union says immigration raids in St. Paul and Lumberton, North Carolina this week demonstrates once again the failure of the U.S. immigration system. The UFCW says according to eyewitnesses ICE agents forced women to leave their children, arresting workers in the dead of night. The UFCW says these raids are no substitute for comprehensive immigration reform. The union believes they are a tragic form of political theater that devastates communities, breaks up families and defiles fundamental American values.

By Doug Cunningham

About forty percent of the more than 5,000 workers at Smithfield Foods, the Tar Heel North Carolina hog processing plant, walked out of the plant this week to protest lack of clean drinking water. Despite a heat advisory, it took three hours for workers to get water. Workers at Smithfield have long agitated for a union and improved working conditions at the plant.

By Doug Cunningham

Smithfield Foods workers and the United Food and Commercial Workers union at the hog processing plant in Tar Heel, North Carolina have agreed to an NAACP call to meet with the company in a new effort to resolve long-standing issues. Smithfield has a long history of anti-union illegal actions, including beating, intimidating , threatening, illegally firing and using racial epithets against workers. If Smithfield is willing to do it, the workers will try to work out a fair process that safeguards workers’ rights in a new union election at the company.

By Doug Cunningham

65,000 southern California grocery workers represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers union have won their fight for affordable health care and living wages. The UFCW’s Mike Shimpock represents the workers.

[Shimpock]: “This is a clear victory for grocery workers and middle class workers in southern California and across the United States. I don’t think the markets were ready for the resolve of our members. Nor were they ready for the reaction of the public, which was a critical portion in us being able to negotiate this agreement. We had over 50,000 people sign pledge cards and petitions saying if there was some kind of job action they wouldn’t shop at these markets.”

By Leilani Albano

After six months of negotiations, Southern California supermarket workers with Vons, Albertsons and Ralphs stores say they are tired of waiting.

Since March 5, the region’s 65,000 supermarket employees have worked without a contract. Although they say they don’t prefer it, they say they are willing to strike, if they do not sign a new contract soon. Leilani Albano has more on the story.

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After months at the negotiating table, grocery workers earlier this month, threatened to walk out of labor talks for good.

Grocery stores and union representatives were talking again on Monday, but a source close to the talks says the union is frustrated and weighing possible strike action. Jesse Russell reports:

By Jesse Russell

After five days to cool off, representatives of Albertson’s, Ralph’s, Vons and the United Food and Commercial Workers all sat down to continue slow going contract negotiations. Prior to the break union members had given UFCW leadership permission to call a strike and a source close to the talks says the union is “done talking” and is now apprehensively considering the strike option. The Southern California grocery strike and lockouts of 2003 lasted nearly five months and workers went months without pay. The supermarkets claim to have lost a billion dollars in sales and the union ended up meeting nearly all of the chains’ demands. A great deal of blame was hoisted onto the AFL-CIO who allegedly failed to mobilize a substantial solidarity effort and pushed UFCW to call off the strike due to approaching elections. At the crux of the current negotiations is a wage proposal that only includes raises for the top pay scale and the introduction of a third tier of workers that would earn less than the second tier workers. Union officials have also said the chains are risking bankruptcy of the union’s healthcare trust fund by proposing a reduction in contributions. The union must give a 72-hour notice before strike lines can go up and union members are reportedly already at work making up picket signs and enlisting captains.

By Doug Cunningham

The Kroger, Safeway and Super-Valu giant national grocery chains are playing hardball as contract talks resume with the United Food And Commercial Workers union in southern California. The hugely profitable companies are balking at providing fair wages and good health insurance benefits to 65,000 workers. The UFCW's Mike Shimpock represents southern California grocery workers.

[Shimpock]: "Combined they had $8.3 billion in profits last year. They paid their three CEO's $27 million combined in salaries and bonuses. These are huge corporations that could very easily afford to give their employees a fair wage increase and adequate health care."

Is a strike coming for Southern California grocery workers? Jesse Russell reports.

With negotiations breaking down between Southern California grocery workers and major grocery chains workers will cast votes Sunday to determine if they should go on strike. A strike vote would authorize United Food and Commercial Worker leadership to call a strike if the impasse continues. The union is upset with proposals from the companies concerning healthcare and wages. 65,000 grocery workers went on strike in 2003 resulting in the longest grocery strike in history.

By Doug Cunningham

AFL-CIO Secretary Treasurer Rich Trumka and UFCW President Joe Hansen say the immigration bill pending in the Senate is regressive in terms if immigrant and worker's rights. Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders joined the labor leaders in calling for strong workers rights in any immigration bill, free of any temporary worker programs.

By Doug Cunningham

Democratic Presidential candidate Senator John Edwards is meeting with Smithfield workers today in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Edwards is calling on Smithfield to give its workers the unimpeded right to organize. A group of workers are trying to form a union at Smithfield’s Tar Heel, North Carolina hog processing plant. The National Labor Relations Board found that Smithfield violated labor law in two union elections at the plant – violations that included assaults, threats and intimidation of pro-union workers. Human Rights Watch has documented Smithfield abuses in two different reports.

By Doug Cunningham

The United Food and Commercial Workers union says its membership in California could begin voting as soon as Sunday on whether to authorize a strike against two southern California grocery chains. A strike has already been authorized if needed at a third chain. Very little progress has been made in contract talks. Roughly 65,000 UFCW workers are employed at Ralph’s, Von’s and Albertson’s. How to utilize a jointly held union-company health care fund to cover increasing health care costs and wages for new hires are among the unresolved issues. A lockout and strike that lasted 141 days happened three and a half years ago when negotiations broke down.

The issue of families caught between low wages and the high cost of living is being moved front and center this weekend during a Seattle Town Hall. Jesse Russell reports.

By Jesse Russell

The discrepancy between wages and the cost of living are hurting families. That’s the main point of discussion at a forum this weekend sponsored by the United Food and Commercial Workers. According to the union 40 percent of its members makes less than 10 dollars per hour and 60 percent of those are part time workers. Jackie O’Ryan is a spokesperson for the union:

[O’Ryan 1]: “When you have workers working sick, when you have