At the King Soopers store in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, pallets of still-wrapped goods crowd the floor with their corresponding shelves left empty. On a typical day, just one or two registers are open, leaving customers waiting in a line stretching to the store’s back wall. The skeleton crew of store clerks hustle to pack an ever-growing queue of online orders for pickup, rushing against a 23-second countdown to collect each item. During the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, Mavis Austin, who normally works as a cheesemonger, was the only person loading pickup orders, because everyone else in her department had gotten sick or quit. “This corporation will grind you down to a pulp,” she told me.

Austin’s store in the Denver suburbs is not an anomaly among grocery stores in Colorado, or even across the country. Grocery workers are on the front lines of the bleak shopping experience in stores owned by just a few industry giants, and they bear the physical and mental costs of chronic understaffing, underinvestment in facilities, and often feeble safety measures. When the contract for 10,000 members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Local 7 who work at King Soopers, which is owned by Kroger, expired in mid-January, 96 percent of workers voted to authorize an unfair labor practice strike. Local 7’s unfair labor practice charges allege that Kroger has refused to provide the union with sales data that would allow it to formulate a proposal on staffing levels and has disciplined workers for union activity. The union also says the company illegally insisted on pulling $8 million from workers’ retiree benefit fund to pay for raises in its last offer.

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For two weeks, workers braved temperatures reaching 16 degrees below zero during the busy Super Bowl and Valentine’s Day weekends, calling on the company to meet their demands to increase staffing, raise wages, and enhance safety measures. “All of us were unanimously in agreement that this needed to happen because the company was never going to be held accountable,” said Kay Lyska, who has worked at a King Soopers store near Denver for five years.

Grocery workers nationwide are watching Local 7’s fight, which will set the standard for their own negotiations in the coming months. The Colorado strike marked the first of a cascade of contract expirations for more than 130,000 grocery workers between now and June in California, Washington, Georgia, and beyond. While UFCW locals across the country negotiate their contracts separately, Local 7 is part of a coalition trying to build industry-wide leverage by discussing proposals and attending each other’s bargaining sessions.

Last year that coalition worked with other union locals and community groups to successfully halt the $25 billion mega-merger between Kroger and Albertsons. Since Albertsons announced that it was killing the merger in December, workers say Kroger’s bargaining proposals have felt retaliatory. “There was big money for them in this,” said Kim Cordova, the president of Local 7. “They’re going to take it out on whoever they can so that they can repay their shareholders’ money.”

Local 7 workers are bargaining with Kroger for a living wage as the company hits astronomical earnings. In September 2024, Kroger reported year-to-date earnings of $1.4 billion, nearly doubling since 2023. During testimony before the Federal Trade Commission over the merger, Andy Groff, Kroger’s senior director for pricing, admitted that the company was raising prices on eggs and milk above inflation levels. “While the company continued to raise prices, they continued to reduce staff,” said Cordova. “They were not investing in safety, in new equipment, in adding bodies or hours to the stores.”

The union is also asking Kroger to notify workers of dangerous incidents within a certain distance of stores. Some of the workers who went on strike in February survived the 2021 mass shooting at a King Soopers store in Boulder in which 10 people were killed. During negotiations, there was a shooting in a King Soopers parking lot in Colorado Springs, which the union says King Soopers did not alert employees of.

This year Local 7 will make contract proposals around staffing for the first time—as stores increasingly rely on self-checkout and e-commerce. While stores used to have dedicated clerks for different departments, now most positions are “all-purpose,” and workers are routinely pulled to different parts of the store. “Most of us are fried,” said Chris Lacey, who works at a King Soopers store in Littleton, a Denver suburb. “No reasonable human being can sustain what they want us to sustain.”

Local 7 and Kroger have been in bargaining since October, but the union says Kroger did not provide them with data on staffing or scheduling processes until January 15 despite numerous requests. In a press release, Kroger claimed, “The Company has gone to great lengths to provide all relevant data on multiple occasions—at the bargaining table, in one-on-one sessions, and in written communications.” But the union says that the data that Kroger has provided is too limited to allow them to formulate a proposal on staffing. “The company has made it very clear to us that they’re not going to give up any of their rights of management,” said Cordova. “Because the one thing these employers can control is labor hours.”

Local 7 is also asking for pay increases to keep up with inflation. Kroger has offered a $4.50 raise over four years, but only for certain job classifications. According to Local 7, under the company’s proposal, a supermajority of workers would receive a raise between 0 and 25 cents. A 2022 survey of grocery workers across the Western US found that over three-quarters of Kroger workers are food insecure. “There was once a time when my grandfather could have gotten a job at a deli counter, and he would have been able to provide for his family being the sole provider,” said Lyska. “I’m just asking to be able to pay my bills and have a little extra for savings.”

In January, the company proposed paying for the raises by taking $8 million out of workers’ retiree health benefit fund. Just a month prior, Kroger announced $7.5 billion in stock buybacks. “So you have money for that, but not money to keep people on their retirement plans?” said Lyska. The union says that Kroger’s proposal is not only unjust but potentially unlawful. Labor law does not allow parties to insist on proposals concerning retirement benefits in their last, best, and final offer. In a press release, Kroger said, “The Company’s proposal is not unlawful and does not ‘gut’ the retiree health fund to pay for wages. We continue to provide for our associates’ health care both during their employment and in retirement.”

Leading up to the strike, Local 7 says the company had agreed to just one of the union’s 84 proposals. Cordova said she believed Kroger was trying to stall negotiations to force the implementation of its final offer. “They came in with one of the worst proposals I’ve seen in my 40-year career,” she said. Local 7 allows all rank-and-file workers to participate in negotiations and vote on proposals, and some bargaining sessions have been packed to standing-room-only capacity.

With workers on the picket line during two of the busiest shopping weekends of the year, Kroger brought in 1,600 temporary workers from Southern states to staff their stores, who were put up in hotels and dropped off at stores in an unmarked van each day. “They were paying them a lot of money to be here,” said Cordova. “They could have invested all that money and just taken the high road and done right by the members who have been through so much.” Lacey said that customers did not cross their picket line for the most part, while nearby Safeway and Whole Foods stores had long lines of shoppers. Community members also brought warmers and food to striking workers. He said, “It really showed us that we have the support of our communities, and that our communities understand that we didn’t come to this decision lightly.”

The strike ended after 11 days when Local 7 secured a commitment from Kroger to extend their current contract for at least 100 days, preventing the company from being able to declare that bargaining had reached an impasse and force implementation of their last offer. As Lacey and other workers return to the bargaining table, he feels the strike sent a message that workers are committed to securing a fair contract. “We mean business,” he said. “We know our worth and we’re not going to settle for anything else.”

Rachel Fournier was watching the strike from Los Angeles, where she works as a cashier at Ralph’s, which is also owned by Kroger. “That demonstrates to the rest of the union here that…if they stonewall us on our very reasonable requests, we do have recourse and it does work,” she said. “A labor action can bring the company back to the bargaining table, and Local 7 has proven that for us.”

Fournier is a member of Local 770, which has been bargaining alongside other Southern California locals with Kroger, Albertsons, and other employers for a new contract for 65,000 grocery workers since mid-February.

Grocery Workers Rising, a coalition of seven Southern California locals, including 770 that bargain together and have the same contract, say their stores are just as understaffed as those in Colorado. A report by John Marshall, the capital strategies director for UFCW Local 3000 in the Pacific Northwest, found that over 76 percent of Local 770 members said their stores were understaffed. According to OSHA data, annual labor hours per Kroger store in California decreased 13.5 percent from 2019 to 2023. “These companies are making a choice for the very short term to get as much profit as possible,” said Kathy Finn, president of Local 770. “They’re taking that profit and just giving it back to shareholders.”

Fournier says she currently makes $2,400 a month, while the median rent in Los Angeles is more than $2,000. Paszion Horner-Smith, a 28-year UFCW member who works at a Vons store, owned by Albertsons, in Granada Hills, told me, “We can barely afford to buy the groceries in the places we work.”

By the end of Fournier’s shift, around 10 pm, customers sometimes wait for 45 minutes to reach her register. When customers complain, she takes the opportunity to invite them to the union’s rallies. “This is actually a big part of our contract campaign,” she said. “All this stuff is going by the wayside in the name of a slightly better profit margin today.”

While the Southern California locals have long coordinated bargaining and agreed on the same contract, UFCW lacks a national master agreement that would allow grocery workers to bargain together across states and employers, as the United Auto Workers did in its negotiations with the Big Three auto manufacturers in 2023. Locals across the Western US, including 7 in Colorado, 770 and 324 in Southern California, and 3000 in Washington, have tried to build shared leverage by attending one another’s bargaining tables and discussing similar proposals on staffing and wages.

Grocery workers and union organizers from across the country traveled to Colorado to support the picket line. Eric Marcuz, a 15-year employee of Safeway (which is owned by Albertsons) in Northern California, came to Denver with Essential Workers for Democracy, a reform caucus within the UFCW. He’d never heard of King Soopers before. “But I know they’re owned by Kroger, and I hope somebody that works for them can afford their bills, can afford their rent,” he said. “And if I have to stand here next to them until they do, I will.”

Kroger has fired back at the coalition, filing a lawsuit in late February accusing Local 7 of “forcing the company to bargain with labor unions from Washington and California.” In a statement, Local 7 called the suit frivolous. Cordova said, “It is particularly galling that King Soopers is making such false allegations given the Company’s own track record of being caught lying about illegal coordination agreements with its competitor Safeway/Albertsons.”

Locals 7, 770, 324, and 3000 also previously worked together alongside other union locals and community organizations on the Stop the Merger campaign, which successfully halted the $25 billion mega-merger of Kroger and Albertsons. Fournier’s experience serving on the bargaining committee in 2022 made her want to get involved in the merger campaign. “Albertsons and Ralphs were trying to present a unified front when they were negotiating with us. But the reality is that they are competitors, and they’re worried about losing market share to each other,” she said. “It leaves them vulnerable to a strike where their competitor is going to stay open.” Fournier and other UFCW members spoke at town halls, met with then–FTC chair Lina Khan and several state attorneys general, and attended a Senate hearing on the merger.

The FTC ultimately cited the UFCW’s arguments in its lawsuit to block the deal, arguing that the union’s concerns over how the merger would affect worker bargaining power were a legitimate antitrust issue. In December, after a federal and state judge moved to block the merger, Albertsons announced that they were killing the deal and filed a lawsuit against Kroger. “I came in and told all my coworkers, it’s proof,” said Fournier. “Even though Albertsons is a mega-wealthy corporation that was talking about this like it was a done deal, they couldn’t stand up to the push of all this unified resistance.” On the same day in early March, the CEOs of Kroger and Albertsons announced they were both stepping down.

Local 7 is back at the bargaining table. But members say they’re willing to hit the picket line again, and the weather in Colorado is only getting warmer. “If I saw that contract and it had a lot of the same BS that the last one did, I’ll be out there again,” said Lyska. Horner-Smith still has her T-shirt from UFCW’s 2003 strike across Southern California. “My members and my store, and I’m sure in other stores, we are united,” she said. “And if it comes to that, we will, without a doubt.”