Because you will almost certainly be reading this article after the New Year, I will wish you all a happy “belated” Holiday Season! To say that we have been busy down at Frank Meehan Hall this year would be an understatement. Sorry for the late Holiday edition but there were many more pressing tasks that required our attention in December, so unfortunately the paper deadline became victim. Late newspaper or not I am very proud of the 2024 we produced for our members, and we are hopeful to provide an even more prosperous 2025.
There will be some changes coming to your Welfare Fund in 2026 that will hopefully drive our membership to use your benefit plans more responsibly. You would be shocked to know how many of our covered members don’t even get a physical! Don’t even get me started on all the members who don’t do any of the recommended medical testing based on their age and gender demographics. You will start to receive mail discussing these changes in the early part of 2025 and additional information will arrive throughout the year. Get ready because in 2026 we are going to be pushing you to use your benefits. This should help keep you healthier and reduce our overall healthcare costs! For those of you out there using your well- care services and getting your colonoscopies, mammograms, and other preventative care services, NOTHING will change! For those that don’t, your cost share (i.e. deductibles, maximum out-of-pocket costs, co-pays) could increase in 2026. We have tried hard for years to find ways to get you to protect yourselves by using your benefits every year. In the early stages, there will be cost increases to the Fund, we know this. BUT this will also help to diagnose serious issues and complex medical conditions earlier, giving your doctors the ability to treat them before they become more difficult or even life-threatening.
The Welfare Board of Trustees will also be looking at your dental plan again in hopes of correcting a few line items in the coverage schedule that appear inconsistent, or quite frankly just don’t make sense anymore. We also hope to increase the spending cap on your dental benefits in 2025 or at the very latest 2026. Our dental benefits are some of the most comprehensive in our industries but like everything around us, costs continue to rise. The $2500 member coverage maximum (there are different caps for spouses and dependents) doesn’t cover you nearly as much as it did 5 years ago. As always, we will continue to look for other opportunities to enhance or clarify your benefit programs as the year progresses.
You will also be receiving some literature regarding a new benefit, provided at no cost to you by your Union. Honestly, we hope you will never need to use it. We will be contracting with a Company called ID Resolution, and hopefully, by February all our current members with at least 12 months of service and all our retirees will have this coverage. This service will be available to help any of our folks who have identity theft issues, document replacement issues, need fraud resolution assistance, or help with many other problems. This is NOT a credit monitoring service, and we do NOT provide ID Resolution with your personal information. It is as simple as this, if you God forbid, have a problem, you will have professionals at your disposal that you can call to help you navigate the repair and reconstruction process.
As always, this year proved to be very difficult for some of our members. The closing of stores always causes job losses and transfers for some, and schedule changes or workplace comfortability issues for others. Because of store closures this year our members lost the opportunity to work in 5 Stop & Shop’s, 1 Blank Street Coffee Shop, and the Holiday Farms location in Woodbury. We were lucky that Food Bazaar purchased 2 of those Stop & Shop’s which thankfully kept them open and running under a new banner. Even though there was a desire for Food Bazaar to purchase a third closing Stop & Shop store, in Mount Vernon, the City Mayor and her team intervened, created hurdles, and had a very negative impact, which eventually killed the appetite for the sale. This will be something that we ask our members to remember when Mayor Patterson-Howard is next up for election. No member of our Union should support any elected official who intentionally intervenes in a private sale and causes our members to lose their jobs. To cap it off, the mayor also intends to invite a non-union operator, like Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s, to occupy that location in the future. Hopefully, our members in the area will remember this when they head to the ballot boxes. We are hopeful the Mount Vernon voters will replace this mayor with someone who will respect the value of Union jobs and will support a Union sponsored sale of any of our stores to another Union operator.
With all of you having so much to do already I think it is important to remind you that there is much to do in 2025 with your Union as well. Between our prospective organizing drives in our Kosher and Coffee divisions and our plans for a joint organizing project with our International Union in the Dutchess County area, we are going to need membership help/involvement in 2025 more than ever before. If we just had those projects going on, it would already be a full year, but we also have a few significant contracts to be renegotiated in 2025 as well! Between Stop & Shop, Tops Friendly Markets and VSM Fairway Markets and VSM Distribution we have over 7100 Local 1500 members impacted by negotiations this year. For those reasons and so many more 2025 is definitely not the year for anyone to take a back seat when it comes to membership involvement.
Thank you for another year of doing everything you can to keep your shelves stocked, your worksites safe, and your customers fed. Although the Covid years, and all the drama it created in your shops, are now behind us, the recognition for work you do every day to keep your communities fed safely shouldn’t be. Every chance we get, we remind your elected officials, Union partners, central labor body affiliates, and each other of the importance of the work our members do. In many of our stores, our members are under more stress, and are asked to do more, with less hours and fewer hands than before. Yet somehow, someway, you still find a way to get it done. For those who don’t hear enough appreciation from their owners, managers, or customers, THANK YOU!
With another year behind us, I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you to take a moment to remember all the people that we lost in 2024. Our Union family is very large and made up of current and former members, retirees, lawyers, investment professionals, consultants, medical providers, lobbyists, accountants, and of course, your union staff. Together we will continue to work towards a common goal of ensuring that your workplaces have a wage and benefit package that outweighs the risk and physical/mental strain your jobs carry. Together we can ensure that every single voice will be amplified by the thousands of others in our coalition to achieve your goals. Cheers to you, our members, and everyone who works to make your lives better and your jobs safer! #MyUnionHasValue.