About Fresh & Easy and Tesco:

Fresh & Easy is new in the USA, but its parent company, Tesco, is a household name in the UK where it is the nation’s largest private employer. Tesco stores can also be found in eleven other countries.

Tesco is the third largest retailer in the world, with annual sales approaching $100 billion and nearly half a million employees worldwide. Fresh & Easy is Tesco’s new effort to branch into the United States.

But Tesco’s stores abroad wouldn’t look familiar to Fresh & Easy shoppers. Many Tesco stores are mega-stores that look more like their global competition, Walmart. But the biggest difference is the way that Tesco treats its British workers as opposed to its ‘foreign’ workers like Fresh & Easy employees here in the United States.

Tesco has described its relationship with union workers in the UK as a ‘partnership’ and a ‘model for employer-worker relationships.’ Fresh & Easy workers in the United States deserve the same respect from the company.

In the UK, Tesco workers have a voice on the job and work with management to make the company stronger. It’s time for Fresh & Easy workers to have the same opportunity.