Thread regarding Hy-Vee layoffs

I see your point. We were always told the negatives of unions, that if unions came in the entire structure of Hy-Vee would change.... this was really big about 6-8 years ago. Cut to today, the entire structure of Hy-Vee is now on the verge of ‘change’, but without the representation.

The truth is that union stores have the same management structure as we have. There's a store director, department managers, assistant managers, etc. Unions offer training programs for meat cutters and other positions. There are exactly the same opportunities to move up at those union shops as well. Hy-vee has some great benefits there's no doubting that. But so do the union shops, maybe a few more.
A union at a Hy-vee was pretty much unthinkable in the past, but now we're hearing about pay cuts and job eliminations and those things were unthinkable in the past at Hy-vee too. Big changes are being made and planned that will impact our livelihoods. That being said, union protection is worth looking into.

That’s not true. I’ve worked for some store directors that would give raises out every year from small to big. I have even worked for directors that have not given employees raises for years. All depends on your director. Good luck getting a raise this year.

The ones commenting about unions have obviously never worked for hy-vee. There are tons of great benefits, many of them added within the past 5 years. Insurance is a fraction of the cost up front from what anyone out there is offering. Hard work is rewarded, and almost anyone who works hard and WANTS to move up in the company has the opportunity to. Unfortunately this day in age most people think all they have to do is show up, and the longer they’re there they should be moving up regardless of work ethic and results. Time and a half holidays and Sundays unfortunately are a thing of the past for retail workers. Unionizing would be a sure fire way to eliminate over half of the management positions and get rid of ‘store directors’ as we know it. While maybe some of the lower end jobs would increase in benefits the opportunity that was once there to move up the ladder would be gone for good. And what are you talking about picking and choosing who gets raises? Everyone has gotten raises yearly since the beginning of time. If you haven’t, how about asking why? Just showing up to work is the bare minimum requirement.

If you work for hyvee, you already know the pros and cons.
cons
Just put none in front of previous listed items
pros
none
Geesh!

Could you please list the pros and cons of not having a union.

Union
Having worked in a Union store for several years before coming to hyvee

Pro
These are some of the differences
Time and a half on Sunday
Time and a half on Holidays
Much cheaper and better insurance
No more, fire whoever you want honoring seniority
Wage scale with contract (no more picking and choosing who gets raises and who doesn't)
Premiums for working overnight

Negatives
union dues
Harder to get rid of poor employees

Our warehouse workers are already unionized and have been for many years. Big chains like Kroger and Trader Joes are unionized. We need our wages protected. We have the absolute right to unionize if we choose to do so.

I think it’s time for us to start a union at Hyvee. We need to protect the workers in our company. This is our company too! On the west coast they have union grocery stores. They pay a great wage and employees don’t get jerked around. It’s time

Is there anyone from the UFCW trolling here? If so, what say you?

Hy-Vee has reach its 90th anniversary. Congrats to everyone that has helped us make it to 90. The cold hard truth are some of you won’t be making it to 91. This year is going to be challenging for Hy-Vee. Smiles 2020

Reading these threads, one thing strikes me
There are a lot of things wrong with hyvee.
Old IT
Warehouse issues
Management issues
Corporate issues
And with all these issues , the best they can come up with...

Fire/ Demote/ Layoff employees!!!???

Managers wouldn’t have to spend as much time in the office if they didn’t have to wait 30 minutes for a computer to load every time they log in. 10+ year old computers aren’t cutting it!!!!

Cut the over paid chefs and the dietitians. Get rid of the cycle count teams too. If you can’t find a way to cycle count your own store maybe you shouldn’t be a director. Also for another quick way to save money.Get rid of store level bonus program. Hy-Vee could use that money to build another warehouse which we needed 5 years ago. I would be okay with no bonus if we could just get another warehouse. Lomar warehouse is complete garbage. They don’t ship the right items. Their invoices to the store are always wrong. The lomar reps don’t ever have time to correct the invoice. If anyone of the lomar rep actually worked for a true company like coke or Pepsi or frito lay they wouldn’t make it being sales rep

Hy-Vee has too many chief and not enough Indians. Store directors spend to much time in the office. Manager of waste to much time there too. Lamar reps are useless. Supervisor are as useful as the Hyvee recruiters. They fired all of the recruiters and business went on without a hitch. Randy please review all Jobs manager Jobs. I’m sure you could save Hy-Vee tons of cash on labor.

Well maybe we could be like AldI’s and charge the customer for using a cart. They get the refund when they return the cart. I’m glad that problem is solved. Now can we move on to more pressing issues like the sand paper we use in our Hy-Vee bathroom as toilet paper. Fixing the toilet paper will increase moral!

The post below is just like how the the corporate people react when someone comes up with an idea to save the company a little money. If they would listen to the people doing the work we might not be in thus situation in the first place. Wow. OK randy!! Yes sir.

Stop talking about f—ing carts dude. We don’t care about the carts. Okay we can change the carts to just one. Now Hy-Vee is saved. Get the f— out of here!

Sunday probably is the best day for a director be off. Most directors I have worked for have done this and it seems to have worked well. They need a day to recharge their batteries just like the rest of us. I wouldn't say their day off is like most of us.
I know they are getting texts and emails that are work related on their days off and after hours. But that is the life they signed up for.

How about having only a couple of cart types to deal with? The store I work at has no less than 6 different types of carts. How insane is that. There's the themed cart (police car, fire truck, etc.) The shopper in training cart, the small two decker cart, the regular deep cart, the large shallow cart and the wine and spirits cart. Could we at least cut it down to a couple types? Its seems like we try too hard to be everything to everybody. Walmart uses one type of cart. Its called efficiency.Less maintenance and repair costs. No need to buy 5 types of spare parts. Better costs to buy bulk amounts of the same type of equipment, etc.

I can tell you as someone who worked for HV for quite a few years in various positions my director almost always worked 6 days a week, no matter what store. Also, weekday where when displays are built, resets are done, build up for the weekend happens, vendors come in and business deals are made. Those are the things the director needs to be around for. I loved working Sundays. They are easy. Just basically maintain and enjoy helping customers. Now if you understaffed that’s an issue, but honestly if a store is well run I would imagine weekends are probably the easiest days for a director to take off and not walk back into a bunch of fires the next day.

How busy are stores on weekdays? Managers and directors can take of two day during the week. Directors should be running the store as if it’s their own business. I guess they want to collect 200k plus a year salary and not do weekends. I’ll tell you if I had my own business I would work every week to be successful. We need store leadership at stores with the strength to do whatever it takes to win. Time to hire someone willing to work weekends.

Yes!!! Let’s turn this thread into purely how they can cut expenses without cutting people. I would bet you that employees have hundreds of real world ideas that would help fight costs. However, there is currently no ways to get these ideas higher up. Store directors are too worried about suggesting anything because they get yelled at to shut up and do their job instead of listening to their suggestions. All ‘suggestions’ are one sided coming from the top down. And I tell you what, I bet you’ll find that Hy-Vee has a TON of inefficiencies but they have nothing to do with labor!!!!

Any store still using greeters need to cut those hours and use them for checkers and courtesy. Greeter days are history. Customers don't care if you have greeters. Burn THAT ship. Are we the only grocery retailer that doesn't use electric cart caddies? Target, Walmart and others have been using these for years. One employee retrieves 20 carts or so in one trip. I guess we are content to send a half dozen people out to empty the corrals when they could be sacking groceries or stocking. It's the small things that add up and can help us keep our jobs. Are you directors/higher ups reading?

Yes, store directors working 6/7 days, heavens forbid they take a day off. Might as well let them have their one day off be on a weekend, and on a day there usually aren’t as many fires to put out. They can’t be there every day of the week. Now, department heads should be there at least one day. Part of their job is making sure they’re covered on the weekends, whether that be them or other employees. If they’re doing their job during the week their department will be set up for a successful weekend. So yes, if those things aren’t being met then the fault lies on them and their store director for not holding them accountable. Saying they have to work 7 days a week or every weekend Friday- Sunday no exceptions is ridiculous. So if they aren’t taking care of it the fault lies on them and the director...

Your right they do schedule more help on the weekend. I’m sorry I stand corrected. They schedule all of the part time help. Guess what part timer are not store leaders. Store leaders are dept Mgr, managers of and store directors. They need store leaders on the weekends. I guess part timers lead the way on weekends. Tell me you see your store director on Sunday and most of the dept mgrs are of too.

If you are being serious about weekend help, then you just have a sh–ty director. It’s retail, working weekends has been required and expected for managers/ full timers since the beginning of time. Look at your hours spread, no doubt you have the most hours scheduled on weekends. The store can’t survive without weekend help. I’d call b/s on your trolling post about weekend help. If you are being serious then yes, your director s—s.

You ever walk into a car dealership on the weekend. They have everyone working to help their customers. Do you know why they have a full staff on weekends. It’s the busiest day of the week For foot traffic. Hy-Vee wants to increase sales. Get the staff to work weekends.

Supervisors are not able to help the stores. I haven’t seen mine in months. The only time I see supervisors is if the store is going to be walked by a VP or higher. Randy and top management needs to walk store conditions. I’m not talking about announcing you are visiting stores. Do surprises visit to see the terrible conditions store are in on weekends. Most store lack management and store help on weekends. No store director or manager of. Don’t forget the lack of dept managers on weekends. Please change this. Get supervisor working store

Supervisors are over worked and not given enough time to do their job and actually help out stores. Calling their job a joke is wrong- maybe what their job is now might be. Give them half the number of stores, take them out of new store set up, and let them get out and actually make a difference. Let them train department managers, show the dept managers the ins and outs of inventory, let them help with smaller resets, show the managers all the new stuff, share ideas of what is working and what isn’t work, help put processes in place to succeed. Basically they should be helping departments be as successful and efficient as possible. There are too many department managers that don’t have a clue what they’re doing - all at different stages of their career, half making the same mistakes over and over again. Lastly, add a center store supervisor that does the same as the others but works to help dairy, frozen and grocery- helps with inventory training, processes, pricing, sets, displays, etc.

Anyway, just a long time employee’s opinion. But hey, I know some of the upper folks that can actually make a difference are watching this thread. Currently there is no systems in place to get your suggestions up the ladder. Everything just comes down- one way. Thanks for reading!!!

Lomar reps, area supervisor are all a waste. Unless your goal is to staff the stores with underpaid and incompetent people. I’d take the department heads in my store over 90% of the supervisors in the company.

Lamar rep are a joke. Over paid and under worked. Another useless job at hyvee. How about all of those supervisor for gm, food service, produce and etc. Total waste of money. Put All supervisors back into stores.

If our company is this serious about cutting labor then why not cut all the Lomar reps. About the only time they are productive is to help with a reset. Why do we need subdiary sales reps to try to sell our private and controlled label products to our own company. Seems like a waste. We could accomplish the same thing by using ebuys and cut the middle man out. We would save huge on wages, company cars, motels, fuel, etc. Cut the PDI reps too while you're at it. Leave the store level people who actually pull the weight for the company alone.

At our store we've had department managers get demoted and have paycuts. One worker got a 2 dollar dock, and assistant managers in departments are being asked to work from 12am to 8am. The assistant manager for my department was offered a dollar raise, putting him at 13 an hour for a 12am to 8am shift. They've said the goal is to get stocking done before more customers are out, but it seems likely a bunch of full-timers are about to quit, and a lot of part-timers are looking for jobs elsewhere because of the expectations placed on people.

I've worked at hyvee for quite some time, both at this location and elsewhere, and it seems there's a real disconnect between what the community will actually pay for, what workers can do, and what is profitable. The market grille was never going to fare well here because most restaurants don't; the prices are a bit high and it's unappealing to eat in the grocery store (at least the way this one is set up). A lot of elderly and smalltown folk live around here, and we are in the middle of a bunch of other restaurants and a dying mall is next door. We've had 5 different store directors in 5 years, each with their own "quirks", and the most recent one fired people who have been wasteful, stealing, or awful for years (but also didn't really 'fix' the whole profit issue).

I get asked regularly if I know adults who would like to work for ten dollars an hour. The McDonalds nearby pays more than my store does initially.

Thank you Hyvee for opening up my eyes and showing me how you really care about employees. I have a feeling that new store manager will be moving on from this company soon. You say you are looking to enhance the training program. What you have done was turn away future great store director because they really just want to save money. Or maybe this is Hyvee way of getting rid of high paying directors like myself. Just a matter of time before they do all of us this way.

Directors are overpaid cry babies.

Hy-Vee was a great company to work for. Until they started to promote females into leadership roles that didn’t deserve those jobs. Just promote them because we need women in management. The only job they belong is in the kitchen department!

It wasn't our decision to give our final sales to Casey's and Shell. It wasn't our decision to NOT build gas stations from the onset of the fuel saver to send those people back to our stores for the end point sale. It wasn't our decision to have gt ordering. It wasn't our idea to rip out the fryers in every bakery....just to put them back in a year later. It wasn't our idea to push out our everyday customers for a failing Market grill.
And now your saving grace is to cut service and raise prices. And further depend on the part time staff that don't give a care....let alone show up.
And its OUR company. You must have skipped the Employee Owned part. A very integral and necessary part of OUR company.

Stop your crying
Really, you take a 45% percent paycut or get cut from full time to part time and lose your families insurance.
Small sacrifice...you should be ashamed of yourself.

Stop your crying!! If you would just do your job right we wouldn’t be in this situation. If you truly cared about Hy-Vee you wouldn’t cry about make a small sacrifice. Don’t like it get out. We don’t need your cancer around my company.