Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Grocery Giants for Illegal No-Poach Agreements
For Immediate Release
November 26, 2024
CONTACT: Mathew Shechter mshechter@ufcw7.com | 303-425-0897 ext. 445
Denver, CO – Today, a class action lawsuit, on behalf of grocery store workers across Colorado, was filed against King Soopers and City Market, subsidiaries of The Kroger Company, as well as Safeway/Albertsons, as a result of certain unlawful no-poach agreements those two companies entered into around the 2022 strike against King Soopers by United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7. The lead plaintiff of the class action is UFCW Local 7 member Valarie Morgan, a long-time grocery store worker who was on the union’s contract negotiation team in 2021-2022, and the suit was filed by Towards Justice, a public-interest law firm.
These no-poach agreements came to light early in 2024 through an investigation into the proposed Kroger-Albertsons merger. That investigation resulted in a lawsuit filed by Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, which is presently pending before the Denver District Court. As part of a larger lawsuit seeking to block the proposed $26 billion mega merger of the two grocery giants, Weiser also challenged the no-poach agreements. At the time the AG stated:
King Soopers was concerned about losing employees and customers to Safeway during the strike and entered into an agreement with Albertsons whereby Safeway agreed not to hire any King Soopers employees and to not solicit any of King Soopers’ pharmacy customers, according to an email between company executives leading up to the strike. Such no-poach and non-solicitation agreements are illegal under the Colorado State Antitrust Act because they are agreements to not compete.
Although AG Weiser’s case seeks to impose certain penalties against the grocers as a result of these agreements, today’s class action lawsuit seeks to recover lost wages and other economic gains for workers that could have been secured but for the unlawful agreements.
“This case is an attempt to bring light and justice to the 18,000 unionized grocery store workers, and the thousands of non-union grocery store workers, who were harmed by this hidden and illegal deal between King Soopers, City Market, and Safeway parent companies Kroger and Albertsons,” said Kim Cordova, President of UFCW Local 7. “Our members went on strike and won a major new contract, but now it has become clear we could have made even more gains if these corporations had not broken the law behind our backs.”
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Local 7, is the largest private-sector Union in Colorado and Wyoming. It is affiliated with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union which represents over 1.3 million workers in the United States and Canada, one of the largest private-sector Unions in North America. UFCW members work in a wide range of industries, including retail food, food processing, agriculture, retail sales, and health care.