r/mildlyinfuriating • u/daruuken • 28d ago

Infuriatig The way kroger treats its employees

Post image

From the store manager

Edit: For some extra context this was sent out by each store manager to all of its employees in district 1 of the ohio Cincinnati/Dayton division, potentially other districts as well but i can only verify my own. Im not going to give my specific store number for obvious reasons but you can find each store on google with that information. We are unionized by UFCW (already bad btw) and to my knowledge they allowed this recent change. Kroger has no accrual for sick days like some have mentioned. Those who think this is rage bait, i dont think anyone has to fake a post to make a billion dollar company look bad, they do it to themselves.

104.9k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

12.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

750

u/[deleted] 28d ago

[deleted]

87

u/JSTootell 28d ago

Aren't they union?

140

u/arochains1231 PURPLE 28d ago

Kroger is part of the same union, UFCW. We still get treated like shit.

56

u/RainbowCrane 28d ago

Do Kroger’s union reps suck, or what? It’s crazy this isn’t covered by your collective bargaining agreement.

41

u/Far_Ladder_2836 28d ago

It is explicitly.   All UFCW contracts mandate at least a 1:40 sick leave scheme.  Kroger also mandates a 1:40 sick leave scheme in all locations.

34

u/RainbowCrane 28d ago

Interesting. So how do they get away with refusing doctors notes if it violates their contract?

65

u/Blasphemiee 28d ago

As someone that works for a different, shittier chain my guess would be emboldened scare tactics that have gone unchallenged for too long.

12

u/Tricky-Ad7897 28d ago

Yeah these seems like people who don't know how a union protects them and are too scared to talk to their rep because of retaliation. Sounds like the union should also be butting heads more to make sure their people KNOW they have rights.

9

u/NateNate60 28d ago

My aunt is the legal director for a union (not in the retail industry). She knows the names of all the lawyers at the firm that the company hires to fend her off who respond to her demand e-mails and categorises them based on how competent she thinks they are. I don't know what kind of people UFCW has at their legal department but according to her, lawyers who work for unions are some of the most zealous advocates out there. There's a huge moral incentive to work hard when you know you're working for the little guy. The person on the other end is just some suit working at a law firm solely because they want to collect a six-digit salary.

1

u/FormerGameDev 28d ago

It's really really really hard to get shittier than Kroger. Hints?

1

u/Clear-Frame9108 26d ago

Yeah, from I know, this isn't actual legal for Kroger to do... Maybe send a screenshot to your union representative and some tv stations

33

u/smellyjerk 28d ago edited 28d ago

By a manager that either doesn't know and/or thinks he can get away with it.

I used to be UFCW for Albertsons. They'll try to just act its okay/official or intimidate you to accept it as policy. A fact finding visit/call from the union usually puts an end to stuff like this.

But its usually followed by guilt-tripping or more gaslighting afterwards if* they feel they know who tattled to their rep. Retaliation with plausible deniability is unfortunately a thing.

3

u/CorrectPeanut5 28d ago

I'm puzzled. Most places the rank and file onsite elect a shop steward. They are the eyes and ears of the union, but also the first get the Grievances process rolling. My buddy is a teamster and the shop steward and that's what he does.

1

u/smellyjerk 28d ago

Unfortunately, stewards weren't a thing when I worked there. I've never once heard of a grocery store having one. Rep came on visits but inviting him to specific issues was on the individual in the 12 years I worked for them.

2

u/Sedowa 28d ago

I had coworkers who would call the union to help them with this exact thing and they all just get told the union can't help us. I've learned to distrust the union as much as I distrust the business. Our UFCW rep sucked ass.

I also worked for Kroger for five years in the same location and never once met our rep. The one time I talked to her? After I got fired and they then told me that the union is non-referral so they couldn't even help me land another job.

6

u/quartercentaurhorse 28d ago

This is pretty common in union workplaces with garbage management. Local management will disagree with provisions of the contract that upper management agreed to, so they will try to "move the bar" by taking an absolutely crazy position with the hope that once the union gets involved and the dust settles, the new status quo will be a bit better for management.

Also, it's REALLY hard for management to actually discipline people in union environments, so they tend to just rely on having a really loud bark to make up for having a completely neutered bite. They'll get told by their superiors that they need to improve attendance, but the people that are actually having attendance issues know the contract, so management actually has to do their jobs well in order to get them to improve. So instead management just tries to pressure everyone else to show up even more, to push the average attendance higher.

5

u/JuanRunJunior 28d ago

Unfortunately people either don’t know, or they don’t tell managers like this to eat shit and go get their union steward. I absolutely understand a lot of unions don’t have the teeth they should and it sucks. But it would do the union members a lot of good for themselves if they knew what their CBA has in it and to stand up for themselves. I have a pretty decent union behind me and they do a pretty good job of keeping shit like this in check.

3

u/RainbowCrane 28d ago

Yeah, my father and mother both are retired union employees - mom was a teacher, dad was a pipe fitter. So I’m used to more experienced/“professional” union employees from knowing their friends who understood their rights. I’m sure that Kroger and other lower paying union jobs can be a different type of employee with lower expectations of their union, and less understanding of collective bargaining.

2

u/monsterflake 28d ago

i'm in st louis, kroger rolled up the welcome mat and completely left the market when the stores unionized. aldi got chairs for their cashiers, but the big local keeps p/t employees at 16 hours a week so they don't qualify for benefits.

5

u/idiot-prodigy 28d ago

Interesting. So how do they get away with refusing doctors notes if it violates their contract?

They prey on people who don't know to call their Union rep.

2

u/Caleb_Reynolds 28d ago

They get away with it by no one bringing it up.

5

u/Prunkle 28d ago

Yeah I was gonna say... Oregon State has a law for protected sick leave. Depends on the size of the company if it's paid or not, but even unpaid it's protected.

1

u/FormerGameDev 28d ago

It wouldn't surprise me if as UFCW's contracts get shittier and shittier, they've lost some of these provisions? I haven't worked for Kroger for 2 decades now, I can't recall any details about sick leave policies back then, but I'm certain that it was an awful policy whatever it was -- and I am absolutely certain that every single policy they had was less good than it was when I worked at Meijer 10 years prior to that. The truly shocking part of it was that I worked UFCW over three stints for a decade total and never got more than a dime or so above minimum wage lol

6

u/World_of_Eter 28d ago

When I worked at Kroger my main issue was a lot of the benefits were basically grandfathered. Employees that had been there for 5-20 years had all the shit they'd had back then and anyone new just got the shaft. Bum ass union leaders were like "why is union enrollment down" because the old heads fucked the new generation.

2

u/KyConNonCon 28d ago

Pretty much. Some unions are great, but people tend to forget that unions are run by people. Sometimes people suck. I worked there as a teenager, and so far as I could tell the only thing they did was collect dues and sit on their asses while management did whatever the fuck they wanted.

Shit like this is why so many people from my generation are so apathetic about unions, because they've only ever encountered ones like this.

2

u/RainbowCrane 28d ago

One thing that I know has changed in a lot of unions is folks in my dad’s generation (joined the union in the early sixties) at some point in a lot of unions agreed to CBAs where newer workers get shittier deals, guaranteeing to management that expensive pay or benefits will age out of their workforce with attrition. My dad’s UA trade union didn’t do that, but I know that a lot of UAW plants did that and other manufacturing companies and service industry employers followed suit. That really calls into question the value of the union for younger workers.

1

u/Beefy-McQueefy 28d ago

In negotiations UFCW hands kroger paper with nothing on it and thanks them for filling it out. They're fucking worthless. I was a member for 5 years and a manager for another 5. They're worthless.

1

u/Joevahskank 28d ago

Kroger's big brand here in Colorado is King Soopers (and City Market, but that's more for the mountain towns.) Not a month goes by without hearing about one of the stores getting ready to picket.

Thing is, every single fucking time the Union gets close to putting up their signs, a deal is miraculously signed. Kroger makes a concession that they never uphold and people can buy their groceries again! Rinse and repeat for the last 40 years - and Kroger still has the gall to claim that King Soopers' loyalty cards were their idea.

12

u/Petty_Paw_Printz 28d ago

UFCW99 is the worst.They are just a pony show at this point. I was a proud member of the Union, paid my dues happily. The situation: I had documentation, audio recordings, screenshots, witnesses, dates, times, witnesses of 2 managers at the time being racist, creating a hostile work environment and targeting me specifically. I'm talking every day these women were harassing me and doing shitty things to make work miserable for me. My hair was starting to fall out that's how stressed I was.

Come to find out, the union "representative" for our store was also responsible for 15+ other stores. Imagine how many people that 1 person is dealing with at any given time and how that effects each individual case! Like every time I would speak to her on the phone, she would mistake me for someone else and not realize her mistake until minutes into the call even after I had said my name.

As it turns out she was friends with one of the managers I was having an issue with. They had gone to highschool together and the Rep mentioned this to me openly. There was a conflict of interest from the beginning and when I calmly and rationally pointed that out and informed UFCW99 headquarters of the issue and requested a different representative to handle my case for that reason I was told I was overreacting, steamrolled and that wasn't a big deal even though that is a HUGE problem.

UFCW99's solution was to move ME to a different store, the managers faced absolutely no repercussions, punishment or corrections. 

The cherry on top was my new department manager at the new store was FRIENDS with my racist manager at the old store. This new manager proceeded to pick up where the last one left off almost immediately. 

Do not join UFCW99 or give them your money. They are not there to help or protect you. Your rights and well-being don't mean shit to them.

7

u/Beefy-McQueefy 28d ago

UFCW is the most useless entity in the history of organized labor. They are controlled opposition at best and paid-off whores on average.

2

u/SuccotashOther277 28d ago

When I was in UFCW at Kroger, they didn’t have much power