Hundreds of workers rallied this week at the Giant Food grocery store in Greenbelt to protest the company’s plan to outsource its dry good grocery distribution, a move that will result in losing as many as 600 jobs.
The campaign, Justice at Giant, was started Sunday at the Beltway Shopping Plaza in Greenbelt. According to a news release, workers represented by Teamsters Local Unions and by United Food and Commercial Workers union protested in front of the store with picket signs and handed out balloons that read “Giant: Keep Good Jobs in Our Community” to customers’ children.
The outsourcing decision by Giant’s parent company, Netherlands-based Royal Ahold, was announced last month. Jobs would be transferred to a non-union C&S Wholesale Grocers location in Pennsylvania following C&S’ acquisition of Giant’s dry grocery business in Jessup.
Al Rispoli, president of Teamsters Local 863 in Woodbridge, N.J., attended the rally to lend his support, the release said.
“This would not be the first time C&S has destroyed middle-class jobs,” Rispoli said. “In February, C&S closed a distribution center in Woodbridge that supplied A&P supermarkets, costing an estimated loss of over 2,000 jobs.”
Union workers in Buffalo also lost their jobs to a C&S consolidation.
