Hannaford’s distribution workers agree to three-year contract

Union workers at the Hannaford distribution center in South Portland voted 150-38 to accept a new three-year contract that provides an hourly wage increase each year and maintains health coverage.

But Delhaize America Distribution LLC, which operates through its subsidiaries retail food supermarkets in the eastern United States that include Hannaford Supermarkets, succeeded in reducing the hourly wage paid to new employees under the terms of the new contract.

The Portland Press Herald reported that Jeff Bollen, president of United Food and Commercial Workers 1445, confirmed that the union’s 246 employees at the 54 Hemco Road distribution center approved the contract offer three weeks after they went on a one-day strike.

The distribution center supplies 103 Hannaford supermarkets in New England, including 63 stores in Maine, the newspaper reported.

All distribution center workers will receive an hourly pay raise of 50 cents for each of the next three years, with their health coverage remaining the same for the contract’s duration. New employees will be paid $16 an hour instead of the current rate of $20 an hour, the newspaper reported.The distribution center supplies 103 Hannaford supermarkets in New England, including 63 stores in Maine.

“I would like to have seen more, but that is what we settled for,” Bollen told the Press Herald. “Everyone wanted to get back to work.”

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1445’s workers at Hannaford's South Portland distribution center authorized a strike on Feb. 17, but agreed to continue working while mediation talks took place with the company. On Feb. 21, they walked off the job what the union described as "a 24-hour strike in order to secure a fair deal that improves their lives, strengthens their communities and protects future workers."