Flagship San Francisco Ghirardelli store closes amid workers’ strike

San Francisco’s Ghirardelli Chocolate Company closed its flagship Original Ghirardelli Chocolate & Ice Cream Shop on Thursday after workers went on strike. Their three-day strike is part of a union contract dispute related to information on healthcare insurance surcharges.

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Unite Here Local 2, the union representing the workers, has been in contract negotiations with Ghirardelli for over a year. The union has accused the company of bargaining in bad faith by not providing information related to a healthcare surcharge customers must pay at checkout, such as how much revenue actually goes toward covering employees’ health insurance.

Workers started picketing around the waterfront location on Thursday morning and asked people to avoid patronizing the store. 

After the flagship storefront closed on North Point Street, workers moved the picket line to the nearby Ghirardelli Experience on North Point Street and Ghirardelli Chocolate to Go on Beach Street. At this point, neither of those locations has closed.

According to Unite Here Local 2 spokesperson Sonya Karabel, Ghirardelli is proposing an alternative health insurance plan that would provide less coverage for health costs than the current union-backed health insurance plan. She said that for serious hospital stays, what once was around $50 in co-pays could rise to hundreds or thousands in the company’s proposed plan. 

“They’re fighting to preserve their good health insurance, and they’re fighting against a plan that could leave them with thousands of dollars in medical bills or worse,” Karabel told SFGATE over the phone.

Since 1984, it is the first time all of the shop’s workers have gone on strike, Karabel said. At previous picket lines in February and December, some workers were still on-shift. 

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SFGATE reached out to Ghirardelli for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.

Leah Urbana has worked at the Ghirardelli flagship store for seven years. Her current health plan helps her cover the costs of her diabetes medication.

“I need it to maintain my medicine every day,” she told SFGATE on Thursday. How much the company might cover for different medications is uncertain, Karabel said, but general costs would go up under the proposed plan.