Fry's Food Stores of Arizona Inc. and Safeway Inc. have entered into a mutual strike assistance and lockout agreement that provides for certain defensive measures in the event that the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 99 calls a strike against one of the grocery companies. The grocers are currently engaged in labor negotiations with UFCW Local 99. The current labor contract expired last year, and a recent extension expired on October 31. Associates at Fry's have been working without a contract. The agreement does not preclude either Fry's or Safeway from independently entering into a settlement with UFCW Local 99.

Safeway Inc. announced that about 300 workers agreed to extend a labor contract through mid-November after last-minute negotiations with corporate officials Saturday failed to reach an agreement. Employees represented by the Albuquerque-based United Food and Commercial Workers Union claim Safeway officials since 2001 have demanded continued cuts to employee pay rates and benefits packages to help reduce costs. Following ongoing requests to reduce operating expenses, local employees opted to attempt to negotiate a new labor contract. The established labor contract between Safeway and about 350 employees at its four New Mexico stores, located in Farmington, Aztec and Gallup, was set to expire Nov. 1. Union leaders and corporate officials met in Farmington for six days last week, but little consensus was reached despite the last-minute effort.

The American Library Association (ALA) is working with Safeway Inc., on a roll-out of the first two of five Safeway-brand cereal boxes with back-panel content about libraries and librarians. The boxes will launch this October and will be available at Safeway's 1,500 stores across the nation. The first boxes to feature the library-related content are Toasted Oats and Honey Nut Toasted Oats. There will be a staggered launch for the rest of the panels. The panels focus on five content areas: Get rich @ your library lists free resources available at libraries and encourages readers to add up how much they save by using the library's resources; Learn for a lifetime @ your library features the ways that school and public libraries encourage lifelong learning; Great mysteries answered @ your library contains fun facts about libraries, including the number of questions answered weekly by reference librarians at nation's academic and public libraries; Discover the world @ your library positions a library card as a passport to the world; and Discover your family tree @ your library encourages readers to go to the library to research their family tree.