By CANDICE CHOI — AP Food Industry Writer

     The Kroger Co. says it gave CEO David Dillon a 66 percent pay hike last year largely as a reward for the supermarket chain’s improved performance. The nation's largest traditional supermarket chain gave its top executive a pay package worth $8.9 million, up from $5.4 million in 2010, according to an Associated Press analysis of a regulatory filing made Friday, May 11, 2012.

     The hike reflected a bigger cash performance bonus, which rose to $2.7 million, from $808,020. The Cincinnati-based grocer, which operates Kroger, Ralphs, Food 4 Less (QFC, Fred Meyer) and other chains, uses a formula based on the company's financial results to determine annual incentive pay for its executives. The higher payout this year also included a long-term bonus of $619,000 that was instituted in 2008.

     Since then, the board has twice instituted additional long-term bonuses that will result in Dillon collecting extra pay for the next two years as well. That's on top of the annual bonuses he will get.

     Dillon, who became CEO in 2003, also saw his stock and option awards rise to $5.2 million last year, from $2.9 million in 2010. His salary edged up 1 percent to $1.3 million. All other compensation for the 61-year-old executive came to $115,600 and primarily covered insurance premiums.

     Kroger, like many supermarkets chains, has struggled to keep prices low for customers in recent years because rising commodity costs are forcing it to pay more to stock its shelves. Kroger has managed the balancing act by controlling its operating and administrative costs. It has also intensified its focus on marketing its store brands, which help keep costs in check.

     In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Kroger noted that revenue at supermarkets open at least a year rose 4.9 percent in 2011 compared with the year before; the company noted that was substantially better than most its competitors and above its own goals.

EXECUTIVE PAYWATCH!

     We need your help. CEO pay is out-of-control, but we have a chance to rein it in. CEOs of the largest companies now make 380 times the pay of the average worker in the United States. Yes, that’s right. 380 times!

     This growing income inequality is hurting our nation’s economy and working families.
Luckily, some small steps have been taken to bring CEO pay out into the open but, as The New York Times editorialized recently, corporate lobbyists are pressuring the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to drag its feet about making this information public.

     Runaway CEO pay is bad for our economy and it’s bad for the morale of working families. Employees at every level, from the executive suite to the mailroom, contribute to making a company successful.

     But companies act as if CEOs alone are responsible for the success of their organizations. That’s why the average CEO of an S&P 500 company received a 13.9 percent raise in 2011 compensation—to an astounding $12.94 million.

     The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act requires public companies to disclose CEO-to-worker pay ratios. Disclosing these pay ratios will shame companies into stopping runaway CEO pay.

     But corporate executives are lobbying hard to keep this pay information secret. We need to let the SEC know that a few corporate lobbyists advocating for the interests of the 1% does not outweigh the views of working families who feel CEO pay has run amok.

Click on this link to find out what you can do:
http://act.aflcio.org/c/18/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=4198

With the all-out assault on workers across the country, you better believe that when it comes time to sit down to negotiate your contract in 2013, the employer is going to want to cut, cut, cut the pay and benefits that you have so strongly fought for. 
That’s why we all must band together now and get ready.

Remember, YOU are the union.  We all need to have skin in the game in order to combat the wreckage that the corporate fat-cats have brought upon workers.

You’ve worked hard, you’ve done all that is expected of you. Why is it that the CEO’s are living high on the hog, but expecting you to do more with less?

Bargaining your contract will begin sooner than you think. NOW is the time is to stick together and get ready to fight for what you deserve.

Robert Reich was secretary of labor in the Clinton administration.  The following excerpt comes from an article he wrote a year ago, which describes the importance of unions and the need for union members to stick together.

The American economy can’t get out of neutral until American workers have more money in their pockets to buy what they produce. And unions are the best way to give them the bargaining power to get better pay.

For three decades after World War II – I call it the “Great Prosperity” – wages rose in tandem with productivity. Americans shared the gains of growth, and had enough money to buy what they produced.

That’s largely due to the role of labor unions. In 1955, over a third of American workers in the private sector were unionized. Today, fewer than 7 percent are.

With the decline of unions has come the stagnation of American wages. More and more of the total income and wealth of America has gone to the very top. The middle class’s purchasing power has depended on mothers going into paid work, everyone working longer hours, and, finally, the middle class going deep into debt, using their homes as collateral.

But now all these coping mechanisms are exhausted — and we’re living with the consequence.

Some say the Great Prosperity was an anomaly. America’s major competitors lay in ruins. We had the world to ourselves. According to this view, there’s no going back.

But this view is wrong. If you want to see the same basic bargain we had then, take a look at Germany now.

Germany is growing much faster than the United States. Its unemployment rate is now only 6.1 percent (we’re now at 9.1 percent).

What’s Germany’s secret? In sharp contrast to the decades of stagnant wages in America, real average hourly pay has risen almost 30 percent there since 1985. Germany has been investing substantially in education and infrastructure.

How did German workers do it? A big part of the story is German labor unions are still powerful enough to insist that German workers get their fair share of the economy’s gains.

That’s why pay at the top in Germany hasn’t risen any faster than pay in the middle. As David Leonhardt reported in the New York Times recently, the top 1 percent of German households earns about 11 percent of all income – a percent that hasn’t changed in four decades.

Contrast this with the United States, where the top 1 percent went from getting 9 percent of total income in the late 1970s to more than 20 percent today.

The only way back toward sustained growth and prosperity in the United States is to remake the basic bargain linking pay to productivity. This would give the American middle class the purchasing power they need to keep the economy going.

Part of the answer is, as in Germany, stronger labor unions — unions strong enough to demand a fair share of the gains from productivity growth.

The current Republican assault on workers’ rights continues a thirty-year war on American workers’ wages. That long-term war has finally taken its toll on the American economy.

It’s time to fight back.

-- ROBERT B. REICH, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. 

UPDATE — When Patty Rose, Secretary-Treasurer of the Pierce County Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO, put out the call this year to donate jars of union-made Jif peanut butter, her goal was to collect 500 jars for this Saturday’s National Association of Letter Carriers’ food drive. By the time the donations finished pouring in this week, they had collected 2,031 jars — nearly 4,000 pounds — of peanut butter for Pierce County food banks.

Ray Bennett, Local 367 member, and employee of Fred Meyer in University Place, attended a hearing on February 29, at the Washington State Capitol concerning a proposal that will provide partial wages for workers who have been injured off the job or have contracted a serious illness. Ray and Local 367 staff joined the Washington State Labor Council, Longshore Workers, other unions and community organizations at a hearing before a panel of 12 legislators.

One in five employees will miss at least one year of work due to accident or illness, but only ten percent of disabling illnesses and accidents are covered by workers compensation. There are 350,000 bankruptcies each year because of unexpected illness or accidents.

The Washington State Labor Council has proposed a program to the Washington State Legislature that will provide partial wage replacement for people temporarily unable to perform their regular jobs due to off-the-job injury or illness for up to 52 weeks. It would also provide partial wage replacement for working mothers who are temporarily unable to work due to pregnancy or childbirth. It would cover people who need to take time off to care for an aging parent.

This effort will be ongoing and we need our members to become involved. Please volunteer to attend other hearings, and to possibly testify on this important issue. Please send your email address to kat@ufcw367.org to volunteer.

Local 367 will award four $500 scholarships in 2012. Completed applications  must  be   received   in  Local   367's   office   by May 31, 2012, no later than 5 p.m.   Application may be printed by clicking here.

You can also call Local 367 at 253-589-0367 or outside Pierce County at 1-800-562-3645.

Click here for Union grocery store locations in Local 367's Jurisdiction.

Click here for a list of Union-made goods.

Link to Union Label website.
 

 Non-union IGA met with protest

Owner Tyler Myers a long-time
anti-union business owner

Tacoma – On Tuesday, September 6, when the Tacoma City Grocery/IGA opened, owner Tyler Myers was met by protesters carrying picket signs. The United Food & Commercial Workers Local 367 is alarmed over the fact that Myers is opening a non-union store in downtown Tacoma that threatens to lower the area standards, hurting union stores and their employees in surrounding neighborhoods.

Quoted on a KOMO blog in April, Tyler Myers of the Myers Group said that in 30 years none of his employees have ever asked for union representation. He must have forgotten that in 2003, as the owner of the IGA in Ocean Shores, Washington, he was involved in the longest running strike in the history of the Local 367.

Workers of the Ocean Shores IGA voted to join UFCW Local 367 in the spring of 2003. But Myers walked away from negotiations with the union after several months. Nearly a year after bargaining began, the National Labor Relations Board stepped in and ordered Myers back to the table.

Then, through legal maneuvering and tactics, Myers and his attorney were able to stall bargaining so that a contract was never achieved. Myers made offers that fell so far below the area standard that employees could not accept them.

Local 367 plans to extend its Shop Union campaign to the Tacoma City Grocer/IGA to educate people in downtown Tacoma that shopping at a non-union grocery store will be bad for the community. When people shop at union stores, they are helping their neighbors who work at those stores earn good livings that will help them raise strong families and make their communities better places. Union workers set the standard for pay, benefits, and working conditions in the community for all workers. When people shop at non-union stores, they are enabling those employers to lower the standard of living for everyone.

'When you shop at non-union stores, you are helping to put your own neighbors out of work,' said Denise Jagielo, Secretary-Treasurer of Local 367.

Local 367 plans to continue its Shop Union campaign indefinitely.