FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 27, 2023
Maple Grove– Today, UFCW Local 663, which represents essential workers in retail, grocery, meatpacking, food processing, healthcare, and other essential industries across Minnesota, announced that REI workers in Maple Grove are on strike over the retailer’s unfair labor practices and its unilaterally implementing nationwide layoff of more than 2% of workers.
Maple Grove REI workers gave this statement:
“REI’s nationwide layoff is a clear violation of federal labor law and management’s latest failure to meet their obligation to bargain in good faith with Maple Grove workers. Instead of honoring the years of hard work and expertise of their most veteran employees who made the Co-op into the successful brand it is today, REI made the ruthless decision to lay off tenured staff while hiring new staff at lower wage rates.
“Because workers across the country have stood together and voted to join a union, REI should, as required by law, be coming to the table to listen to and negotiate with their own employees over major changes in working conditions, including ‘restructuring plans’ that lead to mass layoffs. Yet management continues to implement unlawful, unilateral changes. Today we say enough is enough. We will not rest until REI treats the federally-protected union bargaining process with the respect and seriousness that workers deserve.”
CONTACT:
Jessica Hayssen, jessicah@ufcw663.org
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UFCW Local 663 represents more than 17,000 hard-working essential retail, meat packing and processing, food preparation and manufacturing, healthcare, and other workers in Minnesota. We strive to improve the lives of our members and of all working families by fighting for economic, political, and social justice in our workplaces and communities. UFCW Local 663 is part of the 1.3 million-member United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.