GoFundMe Started For Key Food Employees Locked Out Of Work

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — Union organizers have set up a fundraiser to help dozens of Key Food employees who have been locked out of work for weeks pay their bills as contract negotiations continue to stall.

The 38 meat department workers — from seven Key Foods locations in Park Slope, Sunset Park, Greenpoint, New Urecht and three spots in Long Island — have been kept from working since April 6 as their union negotiates for better wages and benefits. The workers, who have been holding rallies outside the Key Food locations almost every day since, will enter their fifth and sixth round of negotiations this week.

So far, one of the biggest sticking points in those negotiations has been a request that the employees be allowed to work while the contract is discussed.

The workers have not been paid since they were taken off the schedules and replaced by temporary employees more than four weeks ago despite a "return to work request" filed by the union every day since, union Executive Director Kelly Egan said.

"These people are at their wits end," said Egan, who leads the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 342 chapter. "Their rent is due, their kids are in school, their bills still have to be paid, their credit card still has to be paid — every dime (of the fundraiser) is going to go to them."

The GoFundMe, which has raised more than $10,000 in four days, will be split evenly among the employees who are locked out.

Egan said that Key Food executives have so far only offered for a few of the meat department managers return to work, but the union declined the offer, arguing all 38 employees should be allowed to return together. The union will return to the negotiating table this Thursday and Friday.

"We go back in as one or we don’t go back," Egan said. "You cannot have a partial lockout — it's still a lockout — you either let everybody back in or you don’t."

The original contract stalemate began when the company threatened to take away retirement and medical benefits for the employees, the union has said. Workers who said they haven't had a pay increase in four years said the company was asking them to pay for their own healthcare starting next month.

The lockout is the first time negotiations, which happen every four years or so, have reached this level of disagreement, union representatives said.

Key Food has previously said it will not comment on the negotiations.

Egan said the union is also still calling on customers to boycott the store to support the workers, many of whom have worked at their local Key Food for decades.

She added that it seems the temporary workers have not been keeping up the quality of the meat department customers have likely come to know, anyway.

"So long as people are still shopping in those stores, he has no incentive to let them back to work," Egan said. "Our consumers are our lifeblood in those neighborhoods — we take care of them. Those people come to that store to see us not to see (temporary workers) and not to see case-ready meat. The longer you shop in there, the longer we’re out here."

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