Kroger, Albertsons Allegedly Colluded Against Grocery Workers' Union

The grocery giants Albertsons and Kroger illegally colluded to weaken workers’ leverage amid strikes and contract negotiations in 2022, according to a lawsuit Colorado’s attorney general filed this week.

As workers at 78 Kroger-owned King Soopers stores in Colorado were preparing to walk off the job that January, an Albertsons labor relations executive informed a counterpart at Kroger that his company would not poach strikers during the work stoppage, the lawsuit states.

“We don’t intend to hire any King Soupers [sic] employees and we have already advised the Safeway division of our position and the division agrees,” Albertsons’ senior vice president of labor relations wrote in an email quoted in the complaint.

The lawsuit also alleges that Albertsons agreed not to solicit King Soopers customers to switch their prescriptions over to Albertsons in-store pharmacies, likely helping King Soopers hold onto those customers during the strike.

Colorado Attorney General Philip J. Weiser said in the lawsuit that the alleged agreements were meant to diminish the bargaining power of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 7, which led the King Soopers strike and was about to bargain a new collective bargaining agreement with Albertsons-owned Safeway.

The suit is aimed at blocking a proposed $25 billion merger between Kroger and Albertsons that was announced in 2022. It also seeks to bar any no-poach agreements between the companies, and calls for each company to pay a $1 million civil penalty for any alleged agreements.

A Kroger spokesperson said in an email that Weisner had “mischaracaterize[d] the facts.”

“There was not then, and there is not now, non-solicitation or so-called no-poach agreements between Kroger and