The impact of Obamacare on employers”™ group health plans is being felt in contract negotiations affecting union workers at Stop & Shop supermarkets in Westchester County and the Hudson Valley region.
Leaders of United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1500, the state’s largest grocery workers union, this week said they and representatives of The Stop and Shop Supermarket Co. L.L.C. and King Kullen Supermarkets, a Long Island chain of groceries, have agreed to continue collective bargaining beyond the Sept. 28 expiration date for the union”™s current contract.
The union in a press release said an extension of the existing contract until Oct. 12 was “due to the challenges the Affordable Care Act has presented during the ongoing discussions.”
Bruce W. Both, president of UFCW Local 1500, said the extension will protect more than 10,000 local members employed by the two grocery companies while negotiations continue over changes to their health and welfare plan that are required by the 2010 health care reform legislation.
“This 22,000 page federal health care mandate comes with serious cost increases to health care plans and it is the union”™s priority to ensure that our members continue to receive the most comprehensive and affordable health care available,” Both said. He noted that other companies such as Trader Joe”™s and Walgreens “are simply sending thousands of low-wage workers to new state health care exchanges without understanding the cost implications to their employees.”
“We will not allow the ACA to be used to undermine the excellent union contracts our members have fought for and earned over many years,” the union president added.
United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 1500 represents grocery workers in Westchester, Putnam and Dutchess Counties, New York City and Long Island. In Westchester, union members are employed at Stop & Shop, Pathmark, Gristedes, Fairway, D’Agostino and ShopRite stores.
