Back pay dispute spurs union pickets at Victoria, Minnetonka groceries

A food fight is escalating in Victoria and Minnetonka, as former grocery employees assert they are owed $225,000 in unpaid vacation pay and pension benefits.

The United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) is a partner in the fight that has spilled onto Hwy. 5 and into the streets with weekly picketing.

The dispute, which has been going on for weeks, centers on the defunct Fresh Seasons Market. Its two grocery stores closed in May 2014 due to money woes. But the stores reopened this spring, with new owners and new names — Victoria's Market in May in Victoria and Glen Lake's Market in June in Minnetonka. One of the new owners is the former owner's son.

Besides the union-sponsored picketing of the stores, there have been counter protests, lawsuits and neighborhoods plastered with fliers decrying both versions of the squabble.

Managers at both stores — which are now nonunion — say that with the picketing, sales are soft.

That's the goal, said UFCW members who contend that real estate developer and Fresh Seasons' founder Tom Wartman stiffed 120 former employees of earned pay and benefits while profiting from the two newly reopened grocery stores.

Wartman still owns the buildings where the stores are located; his son, Tommy, is a co-owner of the new stores. To UFCW Local 653, and its president, Matt Utecht, the relationship shows Wartman is still profiting from the stores.

The union sent that message in a letter to 50,000 local residents and rallied at both stores all through the summer.

Tom Wartman, who co-founded Fresh Seasons in 2005, fired back in letters to thousands of local residents that the union "is wrong" and its allegations are "false." The 64-year-old said he lost the $4 million he invested in Fresh Seasons.

"Fresh Seasons Markets didn't have enough money to remain open, and the banks foreclosed," he said in the letter. "I am truly sorry the stores failed."

He added that he paid $18 million in wages and benefits over Fresh Seasons' nine years in business.

Reiterating that he did not have an ownership interest in the new stores, he said in the letter that the union wants to put the new markets out of business.

Neither Wartman nor his son returned phone calls for further comment.

The battle has landed in court. The union and pensioners sued Fresh Seasons. In February, one Minnesota district judge ruled that Fresh Seasons owes workers $75,000 in pension benefits. A second lawsuit, which alleges $150,000 in owed vacation pay, has since been sealed and is making its way through the courts.

Until the case settles, Utecht is sending union members daily to the reopened stores to picket.

Mary Page, a manager for Fresh Seasons in Glen Lake for nine years, has handed out scores of fliers to area residents. She said Wartman owes her $18,000 in vacation pay and health insurance benefits. Before the original stores closed, she went in for foot surgery only to learn that Wartman had stopped providing employees health insurance. "He didn't tell anybody," she said.

An emergency home equity loan covered her $2,700 bill. The insurance cancellation, she said, was a big surprise and came on top of months of wage cuts at both stores.

"I don't have anything against Tom or his businesses. I'd just like him to do what he's supposed to," Kirchmann said. "If he paid up, we'd leave him and those stores alone. I feel bad for the employees who work there."

The union points to Wartman's many investments in asking for the back pay for members.

Tax records show Wartman owns a $2.6 million house in Shorewood, a nine-bedroom home worth $1.36 million in Hawaii and a $323,000 lake home in Grand Marais, Minn. Wartman's LinkedIn page says he owns the Gold Nugget Tavern and Grille across the street from Glen Lake's Market.

Will Jedlicka, manager of Victoria's Market, just wants to run his store and survive the ordeal. "Sales are not where we expected them to be."

Some residents recently took to the Internet and the streets to support the new grocery stores. They came with "Shop Victoria" picket signs, stood on the corner opposite the union folks and asked drivers on Hwy. 5 to honk to show their support for local businesses.

Members of a group calling itself Shop Glen Lake similarly showed up in Minnetonka. "It's a source of great pride that the neighborhood came to rally for the store," said Alan Commins, who manages Glen Lake's Market. The union is picketing "for the wrong reasons. They are not giving any of our markets a chance to run our business. We are a new business."

Utecht, from the union, said all picketing will stop "the moment" Wartman pays former workers what they say they are due.