A couple of weeks after several hundred Lunds & Byerlys employees and family members staged a series of informational pickets, company leadership and union representatives are set to restart negotiations this week to determine workers’ health care benefits.
Pickets took place at Lunds & Byerlys stores in Eagan on May 25 and Golden Valley on May 26. Workers called for retaining their current union-protected health care plan and advocated for higher wages.
The contract between the union and the company expired in March, and the two groups have been negotiating since January.
The most recent round of talks took place earlier in May and were unsuccessful, said Michael Butler, an assistant deli manager at the Navarre location who serves on the union’s bargaining committee.
Lunds & Byerlys leadership wants to transition employees to a company-controlled health care program. The union opposes this proposal, Butler said, because they say it would