Union workers approve Acme contract

Unionized workers for Acme Markets tonight overwhelmingly approved a new four-year contract at the Spectrum that had been hammered out early this morning.

The vote was 985-19. Union leaders had recommended that their members accept the four-year pact.

Wendell Young IV, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776, said the agreement gives its nearly 4,000 members, who hold the vast majority of jobs at 40 Acme stores in Philadelphia and the surrounding Pennsylvania counties, the equivalent of a 2 percent raise, preserves health and pension benefits, and protects union jobs.

"It was a very fair contract when you consider the economic times we're in," he said as about 1,200 members went to listen to the new proposal at the Spectrum. "It gives the company the ability to be more competitive in a tough economic climate, and it gives our members the dignity of additional wage money and be able to maintain a high-quality health plan for themselves and their families, and secures their pension."

The union had been operating under the previous contract for the last 18 months.

Last month, union members overwhelmingly rejected management's take-it-or-leave-it offer. During the last-minute negotiation saber-rattling, Acme said it had the right to impose its offer and Young said union workers would stay home if that happened.

Tonight, many members said they had pulled out all stops to attend the critical vote.

Among them was Larry Elwood, 50, who works at an Acme in Doylestown as a retail clerk.

"There's no strike, which is very good, because no one wins at that," Elwood said as he cast a yes vote just before 8 p.m. "The company would lose money and we would lose money. I'm glad we came to an agreement."

Rita Rieser, 48, literally hobbled in; she had a cast on her sprained left foot. She works as a floor manager at the Acme in Lansdale.

"I was down here before and it was definitely a 'no'," she said as she cast her yes ballot.

"This one is good. He's taking care of the union members who've been with the company 20, 30, 40 years. We were in danger of losing everything under the company's contract."

Rieser said that only eight of her 25 years with Acme were as a full-time employee. Under the company's previous offer, she would have lost her full-time seniority because Acme was proposing to reduce the percentage of full-time employees from 23 percent to 18 percent.

In the new contract, the company now will reach that reduction only through attrition.

The union's concerns about the company's previous proposal centered on changes to health benefits and the pension as well as work rules that would have allowed more outside contractors in the stores, Young said.

Key provisions include:

Allowing Acme to lease certain departments while keeping core departments union-staffed;

Preventing the company from covering a pension with wages or health insurance contributions;

Giving raises in four lump-sum payments over the life of the contract, which runs until February 2012.

"This is one of the proudest moments I've ever had," said Walt O'Connor, 60, a produce clerk at the Woodhaven Acme in Northeast Philadelphia. "I saw the union membership come together more closely than they ever had in the past."

Contact staff writer Stacey Burling at 215-854-4944 or sburling@phillynews.com.