Questions from EMU's

I had a bunch of questions for Ruffin at the Southern Village EMU (Employee Meeting by Unit).

But, I didn't want to take away from all my mates who had questions of their own.

So, I sent Ruffin a letter, and here is his response:

Hi Geoff,

Here are responses to your questions.

Thanks, Ruffin

1) In what manner will employees in SV be involved in the process to appoint a new SV Store Manager? As with all manager hiring at WSM, there is involvement of direct reports in the interview process. In this case, Zack, Micki, and Steve will be on the interviewing committee.

2) Will we be given an assurance that any new SV Store Manager will have previous co-operative management experience? This is certainly one of the criteria for hiring a store manager. However, as there is a very limited pool of managers who have previous co-op experience, there is no guarantee that we will find one with this specific experience.

3) Will there be an all-co-op Annual Employees' Meeting in 2008? When will it be held? There are no definite plans for our next meeting or what the format will be. In the evaluation of the meetings, staff seemed to like meeting as a smaller group at this particular time, although there is also benefit to meeting all together as a big group.

4) Are SV opening hours going to be extended to 10.00pm? There are no plans to change the hours.

5) What happened to the 'open forums'? If more are held, could workers have more say on subject-matter, and in choosing which managers attend to respond to our questions? We held three forums last fall. Two had specific topics and one was open topic, but employees were welcome to ask questions on any topic at any meeting. There was very little attendance at each meeting, so they were discontinued. We continue to explore the best avenues for communication and feedback such as the small group interactions during recent meetings. Also specific questions, input or feedback are welcome at any time.

6) At last year's all-co-op Annual Employees' Meeting, we were told that, in order to bring us in line with similar grocery corporations, we would be offered raises totaling some 20% over three years.

I assumed, and I think most workers did, that the 20% was a cost of living increase on top of productivity increases.

Could we have clarification, please?

7) Will that figure of 20% be changing to take into account the huge increases in the cost of fuel and food?

This 20% is an all inclusive goal. We don’t divide raises between cost of living and productivity. As I said at the meeting, we made good progress in the first year. Wage rates went up over 7% from June ‘07 to June ‘08 for staff who had been at WSM at least a year as of the later date.