Kroger worker negotiations to resume

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Kroger Co. and the union representing thousands of striking workers in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio were to resume negotiations today.\nNegotiators for Kroger and United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 plan to discuss new health information that the company hopes will settle the 37-day strike.\n"The company has some additional information on the proposed new plan provider organization, which we want to share with the union," Kroger spokesman Archie Fralin said Wednesday. Fralin declined to reveal the time, location and duration of the meeting. He also wouldn't discuss the details of the information the Cincinnati-based company wants to pass on to union negotiators.\n"We are hopeful that this meeting can lead to the resolution of this dispute," he said.\nUnited Food & Commercial Workers Local 400 President Jim Lowthers could not be reached for comment Wednesday.\nAbout 3,300 union members in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio have been on strike at 44 other Kroger stores since Oct. 13 when their last contract expired. The dispute is mainly focused on health care benefits.\nKroger's final offer before the strike was to increase its contribution to the Taft-Hartley health and welfare fund by 8 percent a year. Studies by Milliman USA, the fund's actuary, and Towers Perrin, an actuarial firm hired by Kroger, show that proposal would have bankrupted the fund unless it reduced the level of benefits it covered.\nThe union asked the company to increase its contributions by varying amounts over the four-year contract including 25 percent in the first year and 13 percent in the fourth year.\nKroger has since proposed several cost-cutting measures including switching administration of the fund to Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield. In response, union negotiators agreed the switch to Anthem would reduce the cost of the fund but still wanted the company to increase its contribution by 10.5 percent per year.\nThe company negotiators rejected that proposal and said the company wouldn't increase the total dollar amount of its offer. The second round of contract talks ended in that deadlock Nov. 1.\nThe union representing about 4,000 Kroger grocery workers at 58 central Indiana stores reported "some progress" Wednesday in contract talks to avoid a threatened strike.