40 seconds/Announcer lead-in: Nine thousand members of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union are locked in difficult contract negotiations with California-based Safeway Corporation. The company is demanding that workers for Safeway-owned Dominicks Food stores in metropolitan Chicago accept cuts in wages and sweeping rollbacks in pensions, healthcare and seniority benefits. On Sunday, eighty percent of the workers voted instead to authorize a strike if the company does not improve its offer. Chris Geovanis reports from Chicago.

5 seconds/Ezekiel:

23 seconds/CAG: Ezekiel Rodriquez has worked for Dominicks Foods in Chicago for 14 years. He joined 80 percent of his coworkers in voting to authorize a strike against Dominicks owner Safeway Foods unless Safeway improves a contract offer workers have characterized as ‘garbage’. And he echoes fellow workers in his charge that Safeway is seeking to squeeze concessions from workers’ to compensate for the company’s management failures.

60 seconds/CAG: Three years ago, Safeway Corporation bought out Dominicks Foods, a popular grocery store chain that had operated in Chicago and the city’s suburbs for 50 years. Safeway is the most profitable supermarket company in the nation, with almost 1800 stores in the United States and Canada. Company profits have risen more than 60 percent in the last two years, to 2.5 billion dollars. Most Dominick’s employees live in the same neighborhoods they work, and send their kids to the same schools as their customers. But workers and many customers say Safeway’s management strategies have undermined service at Dominicks and hurt the chain’s bottom line – and the company has projected lower earnings for the current fiscal quarter. Safeway chairman, president and chief executive officer Steve Burd has insisted that the contract the workers rejected this weekend is the company’s final offer, and that if workers strike, the company will shut down the chain and sell it’s assets. To employees and their union, that hardline approach smacks of a larger strategy.

8 seconds/Jim Papien

10 seconds/CAG: Jim Papien handles communications for the United Food and Commercial Workers Union International, which represents Dominicks workers at more than 100 stores in metropolitan Chicago.

33 seconds/Jim Papien

5 seconds: Employees say they can’t survive on what Safeway is offering them.

7 seconds/Julie Turdik

15 seconds/CAG: Julie Turdik works at a Dominicks in suburban Countryside. She argues that Safeway executives like CEO Steve Burd are drawing down huge salaries at the same time rank and file employees are being asked to work harder for less pay and benefits.

20 seconds/Julie Turdik

5 seconds: Ezekiel Rodriquez has a message for Dominicks customers, rank and file Dominicks workers, UFCW members and union supporters across north america.

This is Chris Geovanis of Chicago Indymedia for the Workers Independent News Service.

In Chicago, this is Chris Geovanis for the Workers Independent News Service.

This is Chris Geovanis of Chicago Indymedia for the Workers Independent News Service and Free Speech Radio News.

This is Chris Geovanis of Chicago Indymedia for Free Speech Radio News.

In Chicago, this is Chris Geovanis of the Workers Independent News Service for Free Speech Radio News.