Union Members Picket Fresh & Easy Stores

Shopping at Fresh & Easy stores on the weekends may also include interactions with picketers who are members of the United Food & Commercial Workers union.

A blog posted last year on the Fresno Bee website stated, "They're not picketing only the fact that the stores' workers are not unionized, but that the company is not locally owned. Fresh & Easy is owned by British grocer Tesco."

A press release from the United Food & Commercial Workers union quoted UFCW 8-Golden State president Jacques Loveall as saying, "Tesco, which is Fresh & Easy's parent company in the United Kingdom, is siphoning money out of our community.... We are responding to that provocation."

On several Saturdays and Sundays in February, union picketers converged on the Fresh & Easy store located at 955 Catalina Boulevard in Point Loma. They handed out flyers and spoke with patrons entering and exiting the store. The literature handed out stated: "Tell Fresh & Easy- Let Your Workers Freely Choose a Union." It insinuated that the company was guilty of unfair labor practices by "illegally threatening employees for discussing unionization" and also "illegally surveilling employees."

A Fresh & Easy employee told me that most employees are "perfectly fine" with not being unionized and that union officials somehow acquired the private phone numbers of store employees and made calls to them during day and nighttime hours.