FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, May 8, 2025
CONTACT: Daniel Flaming, danflaming@economicrt.org, (213) 892-8104

Bullies at the Table

Consequences of Understaffing by Kroger and Albertsons

LOS ANGELES – Grocery stores are purposefully understaffed and workers’ wages have declined while Kroger and Albertson have fed Wall Street and increased their stock prices 77 percent more than the stock market average. These short-term gains are at the cost of long-term viability.

We all must eat, but groceries may become scarce. The Economic Roundtable report, “Bullies at the Table,” details the impacts of continuing understaffing at Kroger and Albertsons grocery stores on workers and the public.

Paszion Horner-Smith, a front-end supervisor at Vons, an Albertsons store in California, said: “We don’t have enough staff to cover lunch during prime time hours when we have the most customers. It doesn’t make any sense. Business is booming, yet we’re working with skeleton crews.”

The report contains survey responses from grocery workers in three states (Colorado, Southern California and Washington) and a financial analysis of Kroger and Albertsons, who control over a quarter of the U.S. grocery market. Findings include:

• More than nine out of ten grocery store workers in the three states surveyed report price gouging at their stores.
• Customers put groceries back on the shelf because they cannot afford to buy them and are eating less balanced and healthy food than they used to.
• More than four-fifths of workers are unable to pay basic living costs.
• More than two-thirds do not have secure housing.
• Weekly earnings for U.S. grocery workers in real dollars dropped 15 percent from 2003 to 2024.
• From 2018 to 2022, Kroger and Albertsons took $15.8 billion in cash out of their businesses and sent it to shareholders while neglecting maintenance of their stores.
• A $5.50 per hour raise for nonsupervisory grocery workers would stimulate almost twice as much new value in the economy.

Contracts are being negotiated. Kroger said across the bargaining table that staffing is not a problem, and the status quo is working for the company. The UFCW locals replied that it’s time to stand up and fight back.

• Local 7 in Colorado described their negotiations with Kroger: “Instead of working with the Union to reach an agreement, the Company’s proposals had zero substantive movement towards an agreement.”
• Local 3000 in Seattle has a similar report on their negotiations with Kroger: “We presented data to the companies showing that they have made record profits over the last five years—and yet their CEOs keep slashing staffing to fatten their own wallets and line the pockets of their investors.”

Conor Hall, a deli worker at King Soopers, a Kroger store in Colorado, said: “I used to get my job done and done well. I felt good about my work. But Kroger cut our deli staff by two people every day. I can do one job well or three jobs poorly. Now I’m stuck – my only choice is to do three jobs poorly. Think how that makes me feel. Think how that impacts my customers. They don’t see me and my co-workers as the creators of profits for the company. They see us as just another piece of machinery to be used until we break.”

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The Economic Roundtable is a nonprofit urban research organization based in Los Angeles that carries out large-scale data analyses to identify actionable solutions to social, economic and environmental problems. To learn more, please visit https://economicrt.org