Colorado grocery workers sue Kroger, Albertsons over no-poach allegations

Allegations by the Colorado attorney general that Kroger and Albertsons violated state no-poach laws during a King Soopers worker strike in Denver in 2022 have prompted a class-action lawsuit by a union representing grocery workers. 

United Food and Commercial Workers Local 7 filed the lawsuit on Wednesday on behalf of some 18,000 grocery workers in the state. 

The allegations first came to light in February, when Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser filed an antitrust lawsuit against the two grocery giants, aiming to block their proposed $24.6 billion merger and seeking $1 million in civil penalties for violating non-poach and non-solicitation agreements. 

Both Kroger and Albertsons have denied the allegations. 

The state’s lawsuit and now the UFCW lawsuit both claim that during the 10-day strike by King Soopers workers, Kroger and Albertsons entered into an agreement to not poach employees and that Albertsons would not solicit any of the Kroger-owned King Soopers pharmacy customers. 

“In addition to challenging this merger, we are also suing the two companies for a no-poach agreement that harmed workers and blatantly violated antitrust law,” Weiser said in February. “No-poach agreements stifle worker mobility and depress wages, and non-solicitation agreements harm consumers and raise prices.”

On Wednesday, UFCW Local 7 said in a press release that Valarie Morgan, a longtime grocery employee who served on the contract negotiation team in 2021 and 2022, is the lead plaintiff in the case, which was filed by Towards Justice, a public-interest law firm. 

UFCW said the state case against Kroger and Albertsons seeks to impose penalties on the grocers, but the class-action lawsuit aims to “recover lost wages and other economic gains for workers that could have been secured but for the unlawful agreements.”

“This case is an attempt to bring light and justice to the 18,000 unionized grocery store workers, and the thousands of non-union grocery store workers, who were harmed by this hidden and illegal deal between King Soopers, City Market, and Safeway parent companies Kroger and Albertsons,” Kim Cordova, president of UFCW Local 7, said in the press release. “Our members went on strike and won a major new contract, but now it has become clear we could have made even more gains if these corporations had not broken the law behind our backs.”

Neither Kroger nor Albertsons could be immediately reached for comment on the lawsuit, but the two grocery chains released a joint statement in February denying the allegations. 

“It is disheartening for Coloradans that General Weiser would mischaracterize the facts because there was not then, and there is not now, non-solicitation or so-called no-poach agreements between Kroger and Albertsons. Employees at both companies regularly join our teams from—and exit our companies for opportunities to work at—Albertsons, Kroger, Walmart, Amazon, Costco, and other retailers as well as restaurants, food service companies, convenience stores, warehouses, and more,” the companies said. 

Oral arguments in the antitrust case in Colorado ended in late October, but Denver District Court Judge Andrew Luxen has not handed down a ruling and did not set a timetable for a decision.
Kroger and Albertsons also still await decisions from the courts in Washington and Portland, Ore., where they were sued over the merger attempt. The Washington case was filed by Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, and the case heard in Portland was filed by the Federal Trade Commission and nine attorneys general from across the country.