BERLIN, N.J., Nov. 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Last night the union representing 2,300 workers at Acme Markets throughout South Jersey voted to authorize a strike and could be hitting the bricks as early as Thursday, November 19, 2009. A supermarket strike the week before Thanksgiving would impact thousands of holiday shoppers

Members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1360, meeting at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Cherry Hill, voted 580-43 to authorize the Union's leadership to call a strike if a contract agreement is not reached with Acme Markets.

Before the vote Sam Ferraino, the President of UFCW Local 1360, outlined why he believed that Acme Markets was not bargaining in good faith with the Union, citing the company's delaying tactics over the months since the contract expired last April.

"Acme Markets has been stalling these talks for months," said Ferraino. "These are the same tactics that the company used with another UFCW local union in the area, stalling for months and then holding a gun to the head of the members. We are not going to go down that same road."

After Acme Markets expressed concerns about the rising costs of health benefits, Ferraino said the Union worked to come up with a solution that would maintain benefit levels for employees but still save the company over $2.4 million.

"We worked for months to structure a solution that would create a new benefits fund, maintain our members' current level of benefits and still save the company $2.4 million," said Ferraino. "The company flatly rejected our efforts and is insisting that we need to keep the existing benefit fund and force members to pay more out of pocket saying this is a so-called philosophical reason. To me that makes no sense."

"Nobody at UFCW Local 1360 wants a strike. This is not about us bullying the company but it is about us trying to get to a fair contract settlement," he said. "However, we are in a fight to protect our health benefits and when we develop a solution that achieves that goal and saves the company millions and caps health care costs in the process and the company still refuses to agree then we may have no alternative but to strike."

UFCW Local 1360 represents 10,000 members in the retail food, local governments, health care and service industries in South Jersey and in lower Bucks County in Pennsylvania.

SOURCE United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1360

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