Dive Brief:
- Jewel-Osco says it plans to keep the 450 workers at the four Dominick's outlets it is buying. The stores will be rebranded us Jewel grocery stores.
- Dominick's parent company Safeway, announced last week that it was pulling out of Chicago and closing all 72 area stores. Jewel already operates 176 stores in the Chicago area and controls nearly one-third of the market.
- Supermarket workers in the Chicago area tend to be union employees. Some 6,000 Dominck's workers are represented by United Food and Commercial Workers Unions. Nearly 1,000 others are part of the Teamster's union. Jewel employees are also union members.
Dive Insight:
Certainly this is good news for the workers, who get to keep their jobs, and for shoppers, who will see familiar faces in their local supermarket when the stores rebrand. It's also not a surprise. Given the strength of unions at Jewel, there was little chance the company would start a fight with labor during the transition. Dumping the Dominick's workers would have done exactly that.
