It will be shopping as usual at Westport’s Super Stop & Shop and company supermarkets throughout the region following approval today of a new contract by workers.
Union locals representing 43,000 Stop & Shop supermarket workers in southern New England, including about 5,000 in Connecticut, voted to approve a new three-year contract, averting a threatened strike that would have hit consumers in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island.
The Quincy, Mass.-based grocery chain and the United Food and Commercial Workers went into protracted negotiations to resolve differences over health care contributions, pensions and wages.
Stop & Shop’s “goal during the negotiating process was to reach agreements with competitive terms that will allow us to remain the leading supermarket in the marketplace,” the grocery chain said in a statement. “We believe these new contracts meet our goal and provide significantly improved wages and benefits.”
The locals were negotiating as a group in talks that began in mid-December covering workers at 231 stores. Stop & Shop workers in New York, New Jersey and New Hampshire are covered under separate contracts.
A previous three-year labor contract expired Feb. 17, and employees have since remained on the job under terms of that agreement.
