Fred Meyer, Inc., is a chain of hypermarkets founded in 1922 in Portland, Oregon, by Fred G. Meyer. The company was one of the pioneers of one-stop shopping, eventually combining a complete grocery supermarket with a drugstore, clothing store, shoe store, fine jewelers, home decor store, home improvement center, garden center, electronics store, toy store, sporting goods store, and more under one roof.
Fred Meyer stores are throughout Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska. Before the company's merger with Kroger in October 1998, it traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol FMY. Although the company is now a division of Kroger, the stores are still branded Fred Meyer, and the western region of the Kroger Corporation is headquartered in Portland.
Fred Meyer is sometimes known as "Freddy’s", a nickname the company was given by its customers and which is used in its advertising. For a number of years, the company has used the marketing slogan What's on your list today? You'll find it at Fred Meyer! or more simply What's on your list today? in its advertising.
I am a regular customer at the Fred Meyer Tacoma/Pacific store, as it is literally a 5-minute walk from my house. Today as I walked past a house on the next block, a rolled-up flyer in the cyclone fence caught my eye. It was about a couple of former Fred Meyer cashiers fired for accidentally handing back customers' checks for $12 and $26, asking that the customers who mistakenly received those checks return to the store to make good on their purchases.
I didn't take the flyer with me, in case by some coincidence that homeowner was actually one of the check-writers. But I remembered the name Juanita Carroll, and as soon as I got home I searched the Internet for some kind of petition or blog post about this lady's predicament. Nothing. I called the store and spoke to a manager, and even offered to pay the amount of the check, but the manager told me that unfortunately this was the store policy, and even if the employee offers to pay the amount, they must still be fired (they are eligible for rehire if they remain active in the union).
That's when I went back to the house where I'd found the flyer. I knocked on the door and explained that I would like to take it with me, once the man had read it just to be sure he wasn't one of those customers. He seemed to find my request rather laughable, but I didn't care. I came home and called the union straightaway. Apparently this has only recently become a problem with Fred Meyer. And it's a problem I really can't understand. Why would you fire an experienced 19-year employee who says she loves her job (that kind of person can't be easy to find -- I'd have to pop happy pills or wear a hidden vibrator to make it through a day as a cashier!) only to have to turn around and go to the expense of hiring and training someone new, someone who might not even last once they got a taste for what it's really like?
I couldn't believe the union didn't have an online petition set up to pressure Fred Meyer corporate to amend or at least reconsider this policy. I couldn't believe they didn't have diaries posted at DailyKos or HuffPo or even our local newspaper, the TNT. I rely routinely on Fred Meyer for many of my shopping needs, but I would boycott them in a heartbeat to get them to change this heartless policy. In today's economic environment, a job loss can literally be life-threatening. I didn't go put my life on the line in Iraq only to come home and see my fellow citizens' security jeopardized not by fanatical terrorists but by greedy corporate policies.
As one of America's largest grocery retail companies, The Kroger Co. operates more than 2,400 grocery stores, nearly 800 convenience stores, nearly 400 jewelry stores, nearly 500 supermarket fuel centers and 42 manufacturing facilities in 31 states; we employ a growing family of more than 320,000 associates coast-to-coast. The Kroger Co. is the parent company for several grocery businesses, including: Kroger, Fred Meyer, Ralphs, King Soopers, City Market, Dillons, Gerbes, Owen's, Fred Meyer, QFC, Fry's and Food 4 Less.
Where do you want to go? Who do you want to be? A store manager in Atlanta? A merchandiser in Seattle? A division president in Michigan? We are one of the nation's largest supermarket operator measured by total sales. As a result, we have tremendous career opportunities throughout the United States. Wherever you want to go, chances are, we are there too with exciting opportunities for your career.
In addition to competitive salaries and an attractive bonus program upon qualification, The Kroger Co. offers some or all of the following benefits depending on position, location and/or regions:
Medical Plan
Prescription Drug Plan
Dental Plan
Vision Plan
401(K) Retirement Savings Account Plan, with company match
Company-Paid Life Insurance
Voluntary Life Insurance
Personal Accident Insurance
Dependent Group Life Insurance
Company-Paid Salary Continuation
Long-Term Disability Insurance
Long Term Care Insurance
Health & Dependent Day Care Flexible Spending Accounts
Group Legal
Group Homeowners and Auto Insurance
Stock Purchase Plan
Employee Assistance Plan
Paid Vacation Program
Merit Increases
Incentives Program
Credit Union Membership
Company-Paid Continuing Education Program
Professional Liability Coverage
Our Benefits Package
As we welcome you into our Kroger Family, we are concerned about the security, health, and safety of you and your family. Our benefits package is extensive and competitive. Depending on the position, location or region, the package may include the following:
Medical — Kroger's medical benefits package includes several plan options depending on where you live (Health Savings Accounts, PPO, POS & HMO plan). From these offerings, you may select the plans that best meet your needs. Kroger contributes a significant portion of the premium for medical benefit plans.
Prescription Benefits - Kroger offers prescription drug coverage as part of its medical plan.
Dental - You may select from several dental coverage options, again with Kroger contributing a significant portion to the premium for dental plans.
Basic Life Insurance — Kroger provides, at no cost to you, a basic term life insurance plan, which may be supplemented by additional group life insurance available to you at group rates.
Short-Term Disability - Kroger Provides Various Programs depending on your position and location.
Long-Term Disability - Kroger offers employee-paid, long term disability with two optional benefit levels.
Flexible Spending Account Plan (Health Care and Dependent Day Care) - Kroger provides the opportunity for you to set aside pre-tax dollars from each paycheck and designate it to go to child care or health care expenses. This can represent significant savings when utilizing pre-tax health care & dependant care accounts.
Retirement Plans
401(K) Retirement Savings Account Plan — Kroger offers a pre-tax savings plan through payroll deductions, with a company mach.
Stock Options - Kroger provides the opportunity for eligible employees to grow financially as the company achieves business success.
Stock Purchase Plan — All employees are eligible to purchase Kroger stock through payroll deductions. To facilitate employee ownership in the Company, there are no fees or brokerage costs for buying or selling Kroger stock.
Long-Term Care — Employee paid, coverage for nursing, alternate care, facility care, home health care, adult care and informal care for you, your spouse, parents and parents-in-law.
Paid Vacation — Vacations are an important contributor to the health and vitality of our employees. The number of weeks of paid vacation increases with the number of years of service.
Continuing Education — Kroger provides a variety of programs and publications to help keep your professional knowledge up to date.
Professional Liability Druggist Coverage - Kroger provides professional insurance coverage protecting pharmacists, lawyers and architects, etc while employed by our organization.
One of the greatest workforce challenges for Fred Meyer Inc. is to recruit and retain Buyers and Merchandisers. Another challenge for Fred Meyer is to move entry-level staff in the stores into positions that will keep them within Fred Meyer. The purpose of this project is to develop skill standards, training curriculum and performance assessments at Fred Meyer Inc. to create a Merchandise Training Program for employees.
This program will provide career pathways for the existing workforce to become Buyers and Merchandisers, increase their wages and enhance retention. At the present time there is no internal training program for Buyer Support, Assistant Buyer, Buyer and Merchandiser. This training program will create a career path from the Buyer Support position to Merchandiser. This initiative will create new opportunities for retail sales staff in the stores that do not presently exist, to move into training positions in the buyer career path. At the present time, it is difficult for retail sales staff in the stores to access any career path to other positions in the company.
The purpose of the project is to identify the skills needed to do the four jobs in the career path, develop the training curriculum for them, train the workers and evaluate the training. Once the curriculum is developed, Fred Meyer estimates it will enroll about 200 employees in the pilot training in all levels of the program. However, Fred Meyer Inc. has 30,000 employees in the Portland metro area and it is estimated that approximately 10,000 of them will be eligible to participate at some point in the training. The first class is scheduled to be offered in May 2001 and the last class in May 2002. Employees will be offered the training during their regular work hours, demonstrating total employee support for the training offered.
The training program includes 31 classes, from 2 hours to 30 hours in length. The classes are taught in modules, so that the same class with different areas at Fred Meyer - Home, Food and Soft Goods. The training will be modular in nature, which will render it quite flexible, portable and adaptable to other industries. The project will also develop the materials for the instructors, including training guides, student workbooks, job aides, on-line Intranet classes, quick reference guides for computer systems, Computer Based Training etc.
The training will utilize a variety of instructional modalities including classroom instruction, group discussion, mentoring, work-related projects, portfolios, mentoring and work based experience. Moving through the career path will increase salaries, sometimes substantially. For example, the move from store employee to buyer support would be a 30% increase in pay. Completing the entire program to Merchandiser would be an additional 125% increase in pay. The program will be piloted with employees in the Portland metro area and will be open to all the positions in the career path so employees in each of the positions can move to the next level.
Fred Meyer stores are throughout Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska. Before the company's merger with Kroger in October 1998, it traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol FMY. Although the company is now a division of Kroger, the stores are still branded Fred Meyer, and the western region of the Kroger Corporation is headquartered in Portland.
Fred Meyer is sometimes known as "Freddy’s", a nickname the company was given by its customers and which is used in its advertising. For a number of years, the company has used the marketing slogan What's on your list today? You'll find it at Fred Meyer! or more simply What's on your list today? in its advertising.
I am a regular customer at the Fred Meyer Tacoma/Pacific store, as it is literally a 5-minute walk from my house. Today as I walked past a house on the next block, a rolled-up flyer in the cyclone fence caught my eye. It was about a couple of former Fred Meyer cashiers fired for accidentally handing back customers' checks for $12 and $26, asking that the customers who mistakenly received those checks return to the store to make good on their purchases.
I didn't take the flyer with me, in case by some coincidence that homeowner was actually one of the check-writers. But I remembered the name Juanita Carroll, and as soon as I got home I searched the Internet for some kind of petition or blog post about this lady's predicament. Nothing. I called the store and spoke to a manager, and even offered to pay the amount of the check, but the manager told me that unfortunately this was the store policy, and even if the employee offers to pay the amount, they must still be fired (they are eligible for rehire if they remain active in the union).
That's when I went back to the house where I'd found the flyer. I knocked on the door and explained that I would like to take it with me, once the man had read it just to be sure he wasn't one of those customers. He seemed to find my request rather laughable, but I didn't care. I came home and called the union straightaway. Apparently this has only recently become a problem with Fred Meyer. And it's a problem I really can't understand. Why would you fire an experienced 19-year employee who says she loves her job (that kind of person can't be easy to find -- I'd have to pop happy pills or wear a hidden vibrator to make it through a day as a cashier!) only to have to turn around and go to the expense of hiring and training someone new, someone who might not even last once they got a taste for what it's really like?
I couldn't believe the union didn't have an online petition set up to pressure Fred Meyer corporate to amend or at least reconsider this policy. I couldn't believe they didn't have diaries posted at DailyKos or HuffPo or even our local newspaper, the TNT. I rely routinely on Fred Meyer for many of my shopping needs, but I would boycott them in a heartbeat to get them to change this heartless policy. In today's economic environment, a job loss can literally be life-threatening. I didn't go put my life on the line in Iraq only to come home and see my fellow citizens' security jeopardized not by fanatical terrorists but by greedy corporate policies.
As one of America's largest grocery retail companies, The Kroger Co. operates more than 2,400 grocery stores, nearly 800 convenience stores, nearly 400 jewelry stores, nearly 500 supermarket fuel centers and 42 manufacturing facilities in 31 states; we employ a growing family of more than 320,000 associates coast-to-coast. The Kroger Co. is the parent company for several grocery businesses, including: Kroger, Fred Meyer, Ralphs, King Soopers, City Market, Dillons, Gerbes, Owen's, Fred Meyer, QFC, Fry's and Food 4 Less.
Where do you want to go? Who do you want to be? A store manager in Atlanta? A merchandiser in Seattle? A division president in Michigan? We are one of the nation's largest supermarket operator measured by total sales. As a result, we have tremendous career opportunities throughout the United States. Wherever you want to go, chances are, we are there too with exciting opportunities for your career.
In addition to competitive salaries and an attractive bonus program upon qualification, The Kroger Co. offers some or all of the following benefits depending on position, location and/or regions:
Medical Plan
Prescription Drug Plan
Dental Plan
Vision Plan
401(K) Retirement Savings Account Plan, with company match
Company-Paid Life Insurance
Voluntary Life Insurance
Personal Accident Insurance
Dependent Group Life Insurance
Company-Paid Salary Continuation
Long-Term Disability Insurance
Long Term Care Insurance
Health & Dependent Day Care Flexible Spending Accounts
Group Legal
Group Homeowners and Auto Insurance
Stock Purchase Plan
Employee Assistance Plan
Paid Vacation Program
Merit Increases
Incentives Program
Credit Union Membership
Company-Paid Continuing Education Program
Professional Liability Coverage
Our Benefits Package
As we welcome you into our Kroger Family, we are concerned about the security, health, and safety of you and your family. Our benefits package is extensive and competitive. Depending on the position, location or region, the package may include the following:
Medical — Kroger's medical benefits package includes several plan options depending on where you live (Health Savings Accounts, PPO, POS & HMO plan). From these offerings, you may select the plans that best meet your needs. Kroger contributes a significant portion of the premium for medical benefit plans.
Prescription Benefits - Kroger offers prescription drug coverage as part of its medical plan.
Dental - You may select from several dental coverage options, again with Kroger contributing a significant portion to the premium for dental plans.
Basic Life Insurance — Kroger provides, at no cost to you, a basic term life insurance plan, which may be supplemented by additional group life insurance available to you at group rates.
Short-Term Disability - Kroger Provides Various Programs depending on your position and location.
Long-Term Disability - Kroger offers employee-paid, long term disability with two optional benefit levels.
Flexible Spending Account Plan (Health Care and Dependent Day Care) - Kroger provides the opportunity for you to set aside pre-tax dollars from each paycheck and designate it to go to child care or health care expenses. This can represent significant savings when utilizing pre-tax health care & dependant care accounts.
Retirement Plans
401(K) Retirement Savings Account Plan — Kroger offers a pre-tax savings plan through payroll deductions, with a company mach.
Stock Options - Kroger provides the opportunity for eligible employees to grow financially as the company achieves business success.
Stock Purchase Plan — All employees are eligible to purchase Kroger stock through payroll deductions. To facilitate employee ownership in the Company, there are no fees or brokerage costs for buying or selling Kroger stock.
Long-Term Care — Employee paid, coverage for nursing, alternate care, facility care, home health care, adult care and informal care for you, your spouse, parents and parents-in-law.
Paid Vacation — Vacations are an important contributor to the health and vitality of our employees. The number of weeks of paid vacation increases with the number of years of service.
Continuing Education — Kroger provides a variety of programs and publications to help keep your professional knowledge up to date.
Professional Liability Druggist Coverage - Kroger provides professional insurance coverage protecting pharmacists, lawyers and architects, etc while employed by our organization.
One of the greatest workforce challenges for Fred Meyer Inc. is to recruit and retain Buyers and Merchandisers. Another challenge for Fred Meyer is to move entry-level staff in the stores into positions that will keep them within Fred Meyer. The purpose of this project is to develop skill standards, training curriculum and performance assessments at Fred Meyer Inc. to create a Merchandise Training Program for employees.
This program will provide career pathways for the existing workforce to become Buyers and Merchandisers, increase their wages and enhance retention. At the present time there is no internal training program for Buyer Support, Assistant Buyer, Buyer and Merchandiser. This training program will create a career path from the Buyer Support position to Merchandiser. This initiative will create new opportunities for retail sales staff in the stores that do not presently exist, to move into training positions in the buyer career path. At the present time, it is difficult for retail sales staff in the stores to access any career path to other positions in the company.
The purpose of the project is to identify the skills needed to do the four jobs in the career path, develop the training curriculum for them, train the workers and evaluate the training. Once the curriculum is developed, Fred Meyer estimates it will enroll about 200 employees in the pilot training in all levels of the program. However, Fred Meyer Inc. has 30,000 employees in the Portland metro area and it is estimated that approximately 10,000 of them will be eligible to participate at some point in the training. The first class is scheduled to be offered in May 2001 and the last class in May 2002. Employees will be offered the training during their regular work hours, demonstrating total employee support for the training offered.
The training program includes 31 classes, from 2 hours to 30 hours in length. The classes are taught in modules, so that the same class with different areas at Fred Meyer - Home, Food and Soft Goods. The training will be modular in nature, which will render it quite flexible, portable and adaptable to other industries. The project will also develop the materials for the instructors, including training guides, student workbooks, job aides, on-line Intranet classes, quick reference guides for computer systems, Computer Based Training etc.
The training will utilize a variety of instructional modalities including classroom instruction, group discussion, mentoring, work-related projects, portfolios, mentoring and work based experience. Moving through the career path will increase salaries, sometimes substantially. For example, the move from store employee to buyer support would be a 30% increase in pay. Completing the entire program to Merchandiser would be an additional 125% increase in pay. The program will be piloted with employees in the Portland metro area and will be open to all the positions in the career path so employees in each of the positions can move to the next level.
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