Members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union who work at dozens of Cub Foods stores plan to strike due to what they call “unfair labor practices.”

UFCW Local 663 represents more than 3,000 employees at 33 Cub Foods locations in Minneapolis and across the West Metro. Tuesday, 94.5% of its members voted in favor of a strike, the union announced on Facebook.

Union leaders gathered again Wednesday morning to announce their next steps at the Maple Grove Cub Foods location.

Workers are planning to picket at all 33 Cub locations owned by UNFI in the metro and will strike both Friday and Saturday from 5:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. before returning to work Monday. They won’t strike Sunday due to Easter.

The strike will also affect the pharmacies located inside the affected stores.

Union members want higher wages for both full and part-time workers. Leaders from the union say the last time a contract was negotiated was in 2018, and that contract ended on March 4.

A representative from the union said, “The employer, trying to regress the wage structure from getting raises every six months to having raises be hourly based on your hours worked, is just not practical for today’s labor market. Somebody for example who works 15 hours on average a week which is quite normal, would have to work almost 140 weeks before they got a raise. That’s unacceptable to our members.”

Cub Foods employees tried to negotiate for better pay at the beginning of March, at which point Cub said they had offered union members a deal.

“We’re deeply disappointed that the union is spending a day taking a strike authorization vote instead of using that time to meet with us to reach an agreement on terms for a new contract. We are prepared to implement contingency plans if necessary,” said a spokesperson from Cub Foods.

According to the union, the next bargaining session is scheduled for April 11.

Click the video box below to watch Wednesday’s press conference.