Market Street Meat Workers in Rio Rancho Unanimously Join UFCW

Meat department employees at the Market Street grocery on Unser Boulevard SE, 2200 Unser SE in Rio Rancho, voted unanimously to join United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1564, the union said, making the Albertsons-owned store the third Albertsons location in Rio Rancho to unionize with Local 1564. UFCW’s announcement said the election took place Jan. 20.

The two accounts of the ballot differ slightly on headcount. UFCW’s Feb. 4 press post said approximately 22 workers in the meat department voted unanimously on Jan. 20, while a local report in the Rio Rancho Observer stated that 20 workers voted and none opposed the union. Both sources agree the outcome was unanimous and that UFCW Local 1564 represents roughly 1,200 Albertsons employees across New Mexico, per the Rio Rancho Observer report.

Greg Frazier, president of UFCW Local 1564, framed the result as the product of worker experience with union representation. “We were honored that these employees reached out to us for help,” Frazier said in the union and local reporting. On the question of why a meat unit organized separately, Frazier added, “Meat cutting is a skill, and because of that, they’ve always wanted their own contracts.”

UFCW’s account described the meat crew’s job classifications in detail, listing “meat cutters, meat wrappers, and package meat wall-deli and seafood/butcher block clerks” as members of the unit. The Rio Rancho Observer’s coverage described the department as including “meat cutters, deli clerks and butchers” and noted that meat departments are typically considered separate from the rest of a grocery store for union-representation purposes, a point attributed to Frazier.

The union also provided store history and organizing context. “Albertsons opened this new store in April of 2025, and roughly one-third of the employees came from UFCW Local 1564 represented stores, so they knew what they had and soon realized that the non-union benefits did not come close to matching up with UFCW benefits,” Frazier said in the union release. UFCW added that organizers held one-on-one conversations with workers and that employees who had worked at UFCW-represented stores cited better wages, benefits and workplace protections as reasons to join.

The Market Street meat department is the first department at that Rio Rancho store to unionize with Local 1564, UFCW reported, and the local paper noted a recent related win: bakery workers at an Albertsons in Carlsbad voted 9-1 to join the union. The union and the Rio Rancho Observer did not provide a certified ballot tally or say whether the election was supervised by the National Labor Relations Board; those details can be confirmed through UFCW Local 1564 or the NLRB for an official record.