If you are a Vons employee, ask your District Manager the following questions:

1. Vons made profits in the billions last year and your stock is up by double digits. Why do only top pay scale employees get a raise? In the Stater Bros Contract, EVERYBODY got a raise. You can afford to give everyone a raise.
2. Vons made $2.6 billion in profits last year and our CEO Steve Burd made a $7 million pay package. Why can’t Vons match the contract Stater Bros. gave to its employees when we make so much more in profits than they do?

   • The Stater Bros. Agreement eliminates the two-tier wage and pays all their employees equally, regardless of step progressions. We refuses to pay employees equally for equal work while in progression steps
   • The Stater Bros. Agreement promises to increase the health and welfare contribution by over $5 dollars an hour – the only thing preventing them from doing that our refusal to match them, because all employers have to pay the same into the trust fund.
   • The only thing keeping the two tier health plan in place is your refusal to eliminate it. If you agreed to the Stater Bros. deal, the two tier health plan would be eliminated.
3. Does this contract eliminate backfill? If I get promoted, do I still have to work at my old wage rate despite having new responsibilities?
4. Your letter about the Mutual Assistance Pact said you did it to protect our jobs. How, exactly, is locking us out and putting us on the street protecting our jobs?
5. Even if we don’t approve a strike authorization, you’ll still lock us out if another store strikes, right? So we should just authorize a strike anyway
6. You keep saying your proposal adequately funds our health plan, but in at least seven other places you’ve said that plans have been forced to reduce benefits or raise premiums. Are you willing to sign a certificate of guarantee personally guaranteeing your company will make up the difference if your funding falls short?
7. Your plan doesn’t eliminate the two tier system. It creates three tiers, where everybody is paid differently except at the very top, and it takes eleven years to get there. You call that fair?