Greg Dohler/The Gazette Shoppers leave the Giant Food supermarket at Beltway Plaza Mall in Greenbelt on Tuesday, the day before negotiations on a new labor contract involving Giant Food and Safeway were to start.

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This report was corrected on Jan. 17, 2012. An explanation follows.

Union leaders representing 17,000 workers at area Giant Food and Safeway stores enter contract negotiations this week, hoping to stave off any wage or benefit cuts.

Tom McNutt, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400, called for stewards and activists to mobilize in support of the negotiations, which were scheduled to begin Wednesday.

“We don’t have the ability to make concessions,” McNutt said in a statement. “Our families are suffering. Theirs aren’t. We’re working harder than ever and they’re making the Sheriff of Nottingham look like a saint.”

“We’re ramping up our stewards to be prepared to do whatever it takes to be ready for these negotiations,” said Breanne Armbrust, a union spokeswoman.

She said she could not disclose the union’s demands.

Local 400 is expected to push its members toward a strike if a new collective bargaining agreement is not reached by March 31, when their current contract expires, according to union information.

The union local has 40,000 members, including 17,000 who would be affected by any changes at the 126 Giant Food and Safeway supermarkets in the Washington, D.C., area.

Giant Food, a division of Royal Ahold of the Netherlands, has its regional headquarters in Landover, while Safeway, a Pleasanton, Calif., company, has its Eastern division headquarters in Lanham.

Local 400 is the largest local in the UFCW international union, according to Local 400 information.

McNutt emphasized in his statement that the two grocers combined have almost 60 percent of the region’s market share and that it is the union members’ hard work that makes that dominance possible.

But Safeway and Giant Food officials argue that the true market leaders are non-union companies that also sell grocery products, such as CVS, Wal-Mart and Target, as well as non-union grocers such as Food Lion.

Though Safeway and Giant Food hold almost 60 percent of the 2011 market share when compared with other grocers in the Baltimore-Washington area, their combined share drops to 35 percent when compared with all businesses that sell grocery products, according to the June 2011 publication of Food World. Non-union companies account for most of the top 10 market leaders.

“Our fight is, if there is one, is not with our employees. The fight needs be side-by-side against the non-union competition,” said Harry Burton, a negotiations spokesman for both Safeway and Giant. “They’re trying to drive us and our employees out of business.”

Royal Ahold, which also owns Stop & Shop of Quincy, Mass., reported $5.8 billion in net sales in the U.S. in the third quarter, up 8.5 percent from the same time in 2010.

Safeway reported $10.06 billion in sales for the quarter, up from $9.40 billion for the same time last year.

McNutt said in his statement that the companies, unlike the workers, have the ability to pay more. He has pledged to work “24/7” to improve the workers’ contract — “to make sure they share the fruits of our labor, or they may find their fruit rotting and unsold.”

McNutt also said the union wants to find “win-win” solutions.

“Because at the end of the day, we’re all in the same boat,” he said. “We want Giant and Safeway to keep growing and thriving — and they should want to maintain the most productive, value-adding work force in the retail food industry.”

Burton said the companies will try to work with the unions and employees to focus on non-union competition.

“Who knows what’s going to come out in bargaining?” he said. “There’s not just one way to combat this threat, either.”

McNutt said this is also a matter of whether retail jobs will be middle-class jobs.

Safeway also recently announced the closure of its Hyattsville store on Hamilton Street. The company had hoped to replace the store with another location at the University Town Center, but the effort fell through, said spokesman Craig Muckle.

West Hyattsville LLC, part of Bestway of Washington, which provides ethnic grocery stores, has purchased the old store, Muckle said.

He said Safeway is exploring another location in Hyattsville.

lrobbins@gazette.net

Explanation: The original version reported that Costco stores in Maryland do not have unionized employees. Teamsters Local 311 represents a total of 1,000 workers in four of Costco’s nine stores in Maryland. An initial correction indicated that Costco has eight stores in Maryland.