Last week, Region 7 hosted a workshop that focused on the Armour-Globe union election process, which occurs when a group of workers votes to join an existing bargaining unit. The UFCW has been using Armour-Globe elections to successfully organize workers in our double-breasted retail food stores.
The workshop was led by Local 7 Organizing Director Randy Tiffey and Assistant General Counsel Amanda Jaret from the International’s Legal Department. Staff from UFCW Locals 7, 21, 367 and 1439, which have active double-breasted campaigns that are aiming to utilize the Armour-Globe election process, attended the workshop.
The workshop covered NLRB considerations, worker engagement, impacts on negotiations, best practices for success, and featured a detailed case study about how UFCW Local 7 has won Armour-Globe elections at both Kroger and Albertsons stores.
“We began using the Armour-Globe election process over three years ago and have been very successful in using this strategy to organize in our double-breasted locations,” said UFCW Local 7 Organizing Director Randy Tiffey. “This election process has been around a long time, but rarely used. The more we use it, the less likely it will be taken away by the NLRB. We have used this process to organize pharmacy techs and add them to the existing retail agreements for the stores. We also added deli and Murray’s Cheese workers and workers from a Starbucks Department to our existing meat agreements for that location. Once, we did an Armour-Globe election with Safeway/Albertson’s, and they now prefer we do it that way and agree to stipulated election agreements. However, Kroger has litigated this, claiming they were micro-units and they have lost every NLRB hearing on this matter.”
“I would highly encourage you to utilize this process if you have any double-breasted locations as it is a great way to organize and bring more members into your local,” Tiffey added.
“Region 7 hosted this workshop because four locals in our region have been working on similar double-breasted retail organizing programs and continuously sharing ideas and strategies,” said Kate Meckler, director of Region 7. “One local union organizing director has had much success using Armour-Globe elections, and the other organizing directors wanted to understand more. So, we asked the local union presidents to support a peer-to-peer workshop for all the lead organizers on both the local union and region staff. The information shared, and more importantly the sharing of ideas between staff, was very effective and I would recommend this type of training for others working on collaborative organizing.”
If you have any questions about Armour-Globe elections or would simply like to learn more about them, please have your Region Director reach out to Amanda Jaret at ajaret@ufcw.org.