Fight
to Win
While Dan and his friends play footsie with your manager, the Fight to Win slate believes direct confrontation with the boss will ultimately lead to more money in your pocket and better working conditions.
Respect for Our Work
Dan has never worked in a grocery store, a plant, or in a clinic and it shows.
- Top grocery-retail wages should reflect that our work is a profession, not a summer job.
- It takes too long to climb the apprentice steps so we must shorten the steps to make journey wages.
- Meat-cutters and our plant maintenance crews must be treated and paid like the tradespeople they are.
- Improve dental coverage and work to eliminate tiered insurance levels.
- Focus on improving contracts in our plants and factories.
More Hours
Higher wages are great, but without consistent hours we can still fall behind.
- Fight for more pathways to full-time 40 work.
- Increase the minimum-hour guarantee in retail contracts.
Politics for Us
Dan’s personal political vendettas waste our hard-earned money.
- Build a political program that is focused on money in our pockets or safety in our workplaces, not laws that aren’t even legal.
- Members ourselves should fight for the laws we need, instead of paying incompetent consultants and lobbyists millions of dollars a year to lose campaigns and bust unions.
- Dan wasted union resources on fights with our union neighbor (Seattle-Spokane UFCW local) that brought no value to our contracts. This fight cost members hundreds of thousands of dollars.
No Dues for Booze
Dan loves to fly first-class and makes sure to keep his e-board and staff fat and happy.
- Pass a policy that will permanently end using dues money for alcohol at “business meetings.”
- End the $30,000 Christmas Party for staff, the e-board, and Dan’s friends at the downtown Portland Marriott you paid for.
Better Staff, More Engagement
How many times have you heard the phrases “there’s nothing I can do” and “it’s the needs of the business” from a union rep?
- After ratification, contracts should be in the hands of members right away.
- More field staff, less waste at the top.
- Staff should not only be looking out for contract violations but anything that would erode our dignity, rights, respect, or safety.
- Build a robust steward program – if you want to be involved, it should be easy.
Ryan Van Domelen
Ryan grew up on a dairy farm in Hillsboro. When the bank came to collect, he started his career in grocery. After a year at Fred Meyer, seven years as a non-union clerk, and a fight to unionize New Seasons, Ryan joined 555 as an organizer. While watching two years of union mismanagement, he went back to Safeway so he could fight to save the local.