No progress is reported in talks involving members of Westport-based Local 371 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union and Stop & Shop.
The current contract is set to expire at midnight Saturday, along with contracts covering 37,000 other workers at Stop & Shops in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
“There has been no progress in the talks on anything,” union President Brian A. Petronella told the New Haven Register.
Negotiations will resume at 10 a.m. Friday at the citys Omni New Haven Hotel at Yale University.
There are 79 Stop & Shop supermarkets in Connecticut, including 21 in greater New Haven.
The grocery chain is the states third largest employer, with an estimated 15,500 workers, according to J. Morrissey & Co., a Hartford consulting firm.
The main sticking point is the same one that spurred the ongoing strike at several grocery chains in California—Stop & Shop wants employees to start paying far more of the cost of providing medical benefits, Petronella said.
Supermarket chains nationwide have cited competition by non-unionized grocery stores, such as those located in Wal-Mart Supercenters, in seeking such concessions.
Stop & Shop officials are asking employees to pay 20 percent of the cost of providing health care, Petronella said.
Employees currently pay a 20 percent co-pay for office visits, but contribute nothing directly out of their paychecks.
Because the union provides health care benefits, such a move would cripple the unionҒs benefit program, as many employees would opt out of it, Petronella said.
The company would no longer have to contribute money for those who opt out, and that would drain the unions benefit accounts, he said.
The company pays $475 a month for health care benefits for full-time employees and $120 for part-timers, Petronella said.
The company also wants to eliminate time-and-a-half or double-time pay for working on Sunday, and wants to freeze pension contributions at current levels, he said.
A strike against the AlbertsonҒs, Vons—owned by Safeway—and Ralphs—owned by Kroger—chains in southern California by the United Food and Commercial Workers has idled 70,000 union grocery clerks since Oct. 11.
Daily pickets outside the stores have kept shoppers away in droves, and analysts estimate Safeway is losing at least $20 million a month as a result.
Albertsons has said it lost an estimated $132 million in sales during the first 19 days, and Kroger said third-quarter earnings fell 57 percent.
Stop & Shop spokesman Faith Weiner said it is premature to talk about a strike, the Register reported.
