Unionized Stop & Shop workers in Connecticut voted unanimously Thursday night to accept a new three-year labor contract that ended an 11-day work stoppage on Sunday.
Several hundred members of Local 919 (Farmington) and Local 371 (Westport) of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union by voice votes approved the deal at meetings in New Haven and Southbury.
The two locals now join members of Local 1445 (Dedham), which represents a third of the 31,000 Stop & Shop workers who walked off the job on April 11, who ratified the deal on Wednesday night.
UFCW’s other local chapters — Local 1459 (Springfield), Local 328 (Providence) — are each awaiting votes on the agreement, which was tentatively agreed to on Sunday.
The unions from Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island claimed a “powerful victory” on Easter Sunday after agreeing to new labor terms they say will provide wage increases for current employees, and preserve healthcare and retirement benefits, time-and-a-half pay on Sunday. UFCW and Stop & Shop have not yet detailed labor terms.
An end to the bitter strike was also good news for Stop & Shop, whose parent company, Netherlands-based Ahold Delhaize, in a conference call with investors this week said it lost between $90 million to $110 million in profits due to workers striking at 246 of its 415 stores from April 11 to April 21.
The loss was far more conservative than the $20 million per day loss estimated by a UFCW union leader last week.
The work stoppage, which also caused workers to lose out on their pay, was the first at Stop & Shop since 1988.
“For us, it’s a rather unfortunate and unusual situation,” Ahold Delhaize CEO Frans Muller told investors. “In all the years with Stop & Shop in the last 25 years, we’ve done a very good negotiation process and a fruitful process with the unions. So it’s very unfortunate that this happened…”
UFCW and Stop & Shop, the only fully unionized large supermarket in New England, had been negotiating for months earlier this year before an existing three-year labor deal expired Feb. 23.
By March 10, all UFCW locals had authorized a strike, but didn’t walk off the job until April 11.
The strike gained widespread support from high-profile Connecticut Democrats including Gov. Ned Lamont, Lt. Gov. Susan Bysiewicz, Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy, former Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman and Attorney General William Tong, in addition to several Republican lawmakers.
