Jeff Brown: No more Coca-Cola at ShopRites and Fresh Grocers because of Teamsters strike

Mayoral candidate and longtime grocery store proprietor Jeff Brown has declared that the Philadelphia-region stores he’s associated with will no longer be selling Coca-Cola products because of an ongoing strike at Liberty Coca-Cola Beverages in Philadelphia.

Brown made the declaration at a rally Wednesday night, just a few weeks before the mayoral primary in Philadelphia, even though he has previously said he completely stepped away from the grocery business for his campaign.

Brown had previously expressed support for the Teamsters Local 830 union workers, who went on strike April 16, appearing at a rally last week along with Republican mayoral candidate David Oh, and several other state and local elected officials.

Local 830 has endorsed Brown for mayor. The International Brotherhood of Teamsters Joint Council 53, a council of 29 unions, did so in February.

“I don’t think it’s right what Coke is doing. I stand with the union men and women,” Brown said Wednesday night at a rally in a South Philadelphia union hall. “No Coke in my stores!”

Asked about Brown’s declaration, Liberty said in a statement Thursday: “The company continues to meet with the union and has a full contingency plan in place to continue to service customers. Furthermore, we are focused on ratifying a new contract for our employees.”

Brown mentioned that Local 830 treasurer Daniel Grace, is his longtime friend. “We worked side by side for a long time, usually side by side with the owners of the beverage businesses,” Brown said.

Grace expressed appreciation for Brown’s move in a statement Thursday morning.

“The hope is that Jeff Brown’s bold decision to stop carrying Coca-Cola products in his grocery stores will get Liberty’s attention and compel them to settle this strike now by giving our members a new contract with family-sustaining wages and benefits, a fair contract that accounts for these inflationary times we are all experiencing,” Grace said.

The union treasurer himself has also invoked longtime industry relationships in talking about the strike, and made mention of the union’s opposition of the city’s soda tax when it was first proposed.

“I’m stunned and incredibly disappointed in the anti-union stance taken by Liberty Coca-Cola co-owner Fran McGorry, a man I’ve known most of my life and considered a friend,” Grace said in a statement on Saturday. “When the Kenney administration first proposed the onerous soda tax, one of the first calls McGorry made was to me, pleading for Teamsters Local 830 to use all our resources and contacts to fight back against the soda tax. That’s exactly what we did.”

Brown was also an outspoken opponent of the soda tax, a 1.5% levy on sugary drinks, taking aim at Mayor Jim Kenney for championing the law long before he became a mayoral candidate. More recently, Brown has said repealing the tax, which funds educational programs and improvements to rec centers, is “not a priority” if he becomes mayor.

A longtime grocery store proprietor who owned about a dozen ShopRites and Fresh Grocers in the region, Brown has said that he is not involved in the day-to-day operations of the stores as he seeks the mayor’s office. He said that he maintains a 5% stake in the business and that he off-loaded the rest of his stake to family members before his campaign began. His wife, Sandy, is managing the stores’ operations.

”I completely stepped away from the business,” Brown said in an interview in November when he announced his run for mayor. “I don’t have any job at ShopRite at the current moment, and I don’t plan to go back to that. And all of the sort of business stuff I used to do, I have removed myself from all of it.”

The strike at Liberty Coca-Cola started the day after the 414 union members’ contract expired. Management had presented their last best offer, and members voted against it by a 5-1 ratio, union representatives said.

Wage increases offered by the company were not enough to keep up with inflation, Grace said, and members wanted the opportunity to join the Local 830 health and welfare plan instead of staying with a more expensive Aetna plan offered by Liberty Coca-Cola, as well as bigger employer contributions to their 401(k) retirement plans.

According to the company, the contract offered would have included the largest-ever wage increase for the Coca-Cola Teamsters Local 830 workers. The company sent a letter to union members last week, saying management was surprised the union rejected their offer of 17% raises over the next five years and a 7% increase in company retirement contributions.

A spokesperson for Liberty Coca-Cola said the current average annual pay for a union member at the facility is $79,000.

But Grace said earlier this week that the average worker would have to work 20 hours of overtime per week to reach that level of annual pay, and he said the company’s contention that it offered 17% raises was “a flat-out lie.”

Union members are continuing to demonstrate publicly during their work stoppage. They plan to leaflet at the Penn Relays this week, asking attendees not to buy Coca-Cola products at the event or anywhere else until Teamsters 830 gets a contract. Coca-Cola is one of numerous corporate sponsors of the event. Last weekend, union members also handed out leaflets at Wawa store locations in the area.

Anna Orso contributed to this article.