cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/18952049

Monica Duque never knows how many hours she is going to get in a given week. She works at the Jerry’s Cub Foods on East Lake Street at the front of the store, helping customers, overseeing cashiering, and running online shopping. She finds out her hours, she explains, “when the schedule is posted on Friday, for the week after next.”

“There is no consistency,” says the 24 year old, which makes it hard to save money, or plan much for the future. She makes a little over $20 an hour, and even being cut 10 hours in a week can have a big impact on her finances. “I can do morning one day then night shift the next day. I go from eight-hour days to barely getting seven-hour days. I can never really rely on how much money I’m going to make.”

“People just want to be able to afford to live. One job should be enough to do that.”

Duque is one of around 9,000 Minnesota grocery workers whose union contracts with 14 different companies expired in early March. Of these workers, approximately 7,000 are engaged in coordinated bargaining with seven employers: Haug’s Cub Foods, Jerry’s Cub Foods/Jerry’s Foods, Kowalski’s Markets, Radermacher’s Cub Foods, Lunds & Byerlys, Knowlan’s Festival Foods, and UNFI Cub Foods.

At least the bargaining is coordinated on the part of their union, United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Local 663. The union sits down at the table with the employers together, and gives them joint proposals, but the employers are insisting on bargaining seven different agreements.