Secretary-Treasurer Frank Pozzobon

Union Stops Safeway From Violating Members’ Right To Vacation

The union has been successful in settling grievances against Safeway in reference to vacation language in the Collective Agreement.

1. Blacking out Vacation Weeks. The employer has agreed with the union’s interpretation of the Collective Agreement language in reference to vacation, and that management ‘blacking out’ specific weeks in the vacation planner is against the Collective Agreement and can not be done.

2. Managers are NOT to be included in the number of union members permitted to take vacation as permitted by the Collective Agreement. In addition, excluded management do NOT have a right to select vacation time over union members.

3. Vacation Weeks. The last week of December up to and including January 3, are considered part of the 2008 vacation year. This means the 2008 vacation year will have 53 weeks.

Question:
Why did Safeway think they could arbitrarily decide when members take vacation?

Answer:
Because the company is focused on profits, and they say they need the ‘experience’ of more senior members, so they are attempting to enforce limits of people going on vacation.

“The reality is more senior members are being punished because of Safeway’s inability to retain new hires,” says UFCW 1518 Secretary-Treasurer Frank Pozzobon. “The solution is not to violate the contract in an attempt to control members’ vacation time—the solution is to provide higher wages, better benefits and reasonable workloads so that new hires have incentive to stay with the company longer than 2 weeks for training.”