Macy’s shoplifts our benefits, workers say
Store closure puts workers at risk
by Mike Andrew SGN Staff Writer
In a January 30 press conference, workers at Macy’s downtown Seattle store charged the company with unfairly taking away health care and other benefits from workers who will be laid off when the store closes next month.
Some 150 employees and their families will be affected, losing not only their jobs but their health care benefits as well. For many, the cost of replacing their employerpaid health benefits with private insurance will be a crippling financial burden.
Those issues would typically be addressed in a severance package negotiated with the employees’ union. But Macy’s has not been forthcoming at the bargaining table, according to UFCW 21, the union that represents Macy’s employees.
In fact, the union says, Macy’s is offering workers at their downtown store much less than it gave employees at its Northgate
store when it closed last summer. Downtown workers – many who have worked at that location for decades – say that is unfair.
Macy’s says it has recently changed policy on severance packages and is not obligated to meet the same standards.
Macy’s and the union will return to the bargaining table February 3, and UFCW 21 spokesperson Sarah Cherin said employees will continue to press their demands for fair treatment.
The store closure comes only two years after Macy’s and UFCW 21 settled on a contact after tough negotiations.
Macy’s workers got support at their press conference from Seattle City Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, who appeared with her three-month-old daughter Camila Elena.
UFCW 21 is the largest private-sector union in Washington state, with over 45,000 members working in grocery, retail, health care, food processing, and other food industry jobs.
The strike is an “unfair labor practices” strike – based on charges of intimidation and retaliation by employers against union members.
unnecessary risks for patients as well as hospital workers.
The union says that hospital managers have contracted with thousands of socalled “temporary workers” to replace striking union members and have threatened to keep union members out of work for an additional two days after the strike is concluded.
SEIU 1199NW has been in tense negotiations with Swedish management for many months and says the employer has grown increasingly hostile.
Hospital workers say that short-staffing – the employer refusing to schedule enough workers to adequately cover shifts – creates
Swedish, the largest nonprofit health provider in Seattle, was taken over by Catholic health care giant Providence Health in 2012. Since then, patient care and unionemployer relations have deteriorated, the union says.
“Ever since corporate giant Providence took over Swedish, health care workers have seen management prioritize profits and executive pay over patients’ needs, causing severe care problems, understaffing, and turnover,” an SEIU statement says.
“Providence has grown into Washington’s largest health care corporation, and now controls over 1,000 facilities in seven states.”