“This strike is not about wages, benefits, or working conditions. This is about unfair labor practices,” said Jim Hammons, director of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7, this morning shortly after employees at the Estes Park Safeway went out on strike at 6 a.m.
Some 30 employees with picket signs walked in front of the Safeway store and throughout the parking lot on Sunday morning. One picketer said they had to keep moving or they could be charged with loitering.
According to another employee on the picket line who has worked at the store for several years, the store employs about 110 people when fully staffed.
Inside the store, managers and corporate executives were brought in to stock shelves and oversee the checkout counters.
As of this morning, the strike is also affecting the Pueblo West Safeway, the South Side Pueblo Safeway, the Safeway in Fountain, and the Stapleton Safeway distribution center, which distributes meat to the Estes Park store.
In solidarity, workers are also on a picket line at an Albertson grocery store in Pueblo. Employees at other unionized Safeway stores will vote in the coming days about joining the strike, and according to Hammons, no timeline has been set for this strike.
In February, 10,000 employees at 77 King Soopers in the Denver metro area and parts of Boulder County went on a planned two-week strike after negotiations between UFCW7 and King Soopers over wages, benefits, and staffing levels stalled.
When employees are hired at the Estes Park Safeway, they are required to join the union. According to Hammons, employees sign a contract that stipulates that if the union calls a strike, they will not cross the picket line and go to work at the store during the strike. If they do, Hammons said, unless the employee resigns from the union, they will be fined by the union for their wages plus $250 per day.
Resignation from the union terminates the employee’s eligibility for certain union benefits, such as a hardship allowance and scholarship opportunities for the employee and their children.
One example Hammons gave about unfair labor practices is that the store must contact the union whenever an employee has a grievance to resolve the matter. Hammons said the store has not observed this agreement and has tried to address issues one-to-one.
The union provides for a collective bargaining agreement between the store and the employees to offer wage and benefit protection, “What is good for one is good for all.”
The union agreement also protects striking employees so that they will not lose their jobs by striking.
Hammons said that Safeway recently gave shareholders a $3 billion stock buyback option rather than using the money to provide better wages and benefits to employees.
Although corporate managers were brought in to staff the local Safeway as stock clerks and checkers, many of the shelves in the produce and meat departments were bare this morning.
The Estes Park Safeway opened on July 27, 1985. Its original footprint was 26,500 square feet. In 1997, the store expanded to include an additional 10,500 feet.
Safeway is not the only show in town
While Safeway may be the largest grocery store in Estes, it is not the only grocery store in town, said Laura Kate Webermeier Bishop, whose family owns Country Market, in an interview Sunday morning with the Estes Valley Voice.
The Webermeier family built the National Park Village Shopping Center at the intersection of U.S. Highway 36 and Marys Lake Road in 1978, where they have operated the Country Market Supermarket for the past 47 years.
The full-service supermarket has a fully stocked dairy department with milk, eggs, and cheeses, a meat counter with meat cut on-site, fresh fruits and vegetables, dry and canned goods, frozen foods, a deli that serves Boar’s Head products, scooped ice creams, and wines.
According to Webermeier Bishop, a representative of UFCW7 gave Country Market a heads-up about the impending strike so the locally owned grocery store could prepare for the surge in business as people chose not to cross the union picket line to shop at Safeway.
Country Market hired seven new employees last week, and Webermeier Bishop also talked with their suppliers about additional truckloads to meet customers’ needs. Webermeier Bishop said she expects to see an increase in demand for basics, including water, milk, eggs, and meat. “I think it’s the necessities when you’re out here for the summertime. So s’more stuff will be a big one,” she said.
The store will also stock up on firewood and other things that visitors need when coming to the area to vacation. “We’re doing whatever we can to keep everybody in food up here for the locals and for the tourists who are coming to visit.”
Country Market had already planned to stay open until 9 p.m. this week, but depending on demand, the store may adjust its hours of operation.
Webermeier Bishop is a third-generation Webermeier to run the family store. Her father, Scott Webermeier, an Estes Park Town Trustee, died in 2023.
Two locally owned grocery stores, Riverside Market and Brodie’s Supermarket, closed their doors in Estes after Safeway arrived. City Market, owned by a subsidiary of Kroger’s, also shuttered in the town’s 1980s grocery store wars.
In the 1930s, Estes Park supported five small mom-and-pop grocery stores, H. B. Boyd Market and Grocery, Honor Brite Store, Estes Park Market Co., and C. E. Sholtey’s IGA store. Over the years, several other locally owned grocery stores have also called Estes home, including Circle Supers, A. E. Andrews Grocery, Quick Stop Grocery, Central Market, Jigg’s Grocery and Delicatessen, and Morehead’s Market.
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