Hello everybody. I used to work for a grocery store called Safeway, which had a Union. The reason I bring this up is because I would really love to believe that Unions help workers, but I’m not sure about that after my experience working there.
At Safeway I was paid ten dollars an hour roughly and was treated pretty poorly by management. It felt like I was being treated like a pawn there. Plus ten dollars an hour is a really low pay rate. That was years ago, but Safeway still pays people a pretty small amount of money, it’s something like $12 an hour now for the same job I used to have.
Fast forward to a year ago and I started working at Whole food. There was no Union there and I was paid $16 dollars an hour and was treated quite well. What gives? Is the Safeway Union really weak or something? I really have no idea what is going on here and would like to investigate this.
The one positive thing that I noticed about the Union, though, is that it helped workers who had been there for a long time. I talked to a meat cutter who had been working for Safeway for many years who was making over $20 an hour if I remember right. The Union helped them negotiate good salaries for workers who were in it for the long run. But it didn’t seem to help people much that were there for a shorter period of time.