Costco Teamsters contract sets wages, time off and job protections

Costco workers in unionized locations should treat the Teamsters national agreement as the first document to pull when a paycheck, schedule, or discipline issue comes up. The current contract runs from February 1, 2025 through January 31, 2028 and covers Teamsters locals 150, 166, 210, 542, 570, 572, 592, 822, 853, and 986. For front-end assistants, stockers, forklift operators, meat and bakery employees, optical staff, and warehouse managers, it is the practical rulebook for how the job works day to day.

Start with the sections that affect your money and your time

The table of contents tells you where the pressure points are. If the issue is pay, look first at classifications and wages, authorization for deduction, and any language tied to no reduction. If the issue is time away from work, the key sections are holidays, vacations, sick and personal time, bereavement leave, jury duty, and severance pay. If the issue is discipline, scheduling conflict, or a broken workplace promise, dispute settlement, recognition, union membership, discharge, and the language on union representatives and shop stewards are the places that matter most.

That is why this contract matters beyond labor politics. It sets the day-to-day rules for how much workers earn, when they can be absent, how they challenge management decisions, and what happens if the company tries to push outside the negotiated terms. For managers, it is a reminder that staffing and discipline do not happen in a vacuum. They happen inside a negotiated framework.

What the wages tell you about Costco’s model

Teamsters say Costco has long stood apart from most retailers because it pays better, offers healthcare and retirement benefits, and gives workers stronger job protections. Teamsters Local 986 says the union has represented Costco workers since the 1980s, and the union says it represents more than 18,000 Costco workers nationwide. That scale matters because it makes the Costco agreement a benchmark for what unionized retail labor can look like.

The 2025 bargaining round showed how tightly wages are tied to the company’s broader business model. Reporting during the talks said Costco raised pay above $30 an hour for many workers, while entry-level pay moved to $20 an hour. Teamsters also highlighted a $3 per hour total wage increase by February 2027 at the top of scale. For workers near top pay, that is the kind of contract language that determines whether the job keeps pace with living costs or falls behind them.

Time off and benefits are not side issues

The contract’s time-off language is not an afterthought. Holidays, vacations, sick and personal time, bereavement leave, jury duty, and severance pay all appear in the table of contents because each one can change a worker’s paycheck and family planning. The union publicly framed bargaining around issues like seniority, paid family leave, bereavement policies, sick time, inclement weather, and surveillance safeguards, which shows how the agreement reaches into ordinary store and warehouse life.

Teamsters also highlighted a 22% increase in employer-paid pension contributions, bringing them to $2.56 per hour in the first year. For long-tenured Costco workers, the contract also pointed to six weeks of paid vacation for 30-year employees. Those details tell you that the agreement is not only about hourly wages. It is about whether staying at Costco for the long haul really pays off in retirement security and time away from work.

Why the 2025 deal landed under strike pressure

The agreement did not come together in a calm atmosphere. On January 20, 2025, Costco Teamsters voted to authorize a strike if no deal was reached by the January 31 deadline, and reporting said 85% of members backed that move. Costco and the Teamsters then announced a tentative agreement on February 1, 2025, just as a stoppage was set to hit about 56 stores.

That pressure helps explain why the contract should be read as a worker playbook, not a ceremonial document. Teamsters said the bargaining took place against the backdrop of Costco’s 2024 profits of $7.4 billion, up 135% from 2018. The union’s message was blunt in substance even without grandstanding: if the company can post record profits, workers expect a fair share in wages, benefits, and protections. That argument is central to understanding why the bargaining drew so much attention.

The 2022 master contract still shapes the baseline

The 2025 agreement sits on top of an earlier milestone. In October 2022, Teamsters ratified what they called Costco’s first-ever national master contract, protecting more than 18,000 workers coast to coast. That earlier deal established the framework that later bargaining could build on, especially around wages, benefits, job security, and scheduling protections.

In practical terms, the 2022 contract and the 2025 renewal show that Costco’s unionized workforce is not relying on scattered local arrangements alone. The national agreement gives employees one place to check when the issue is whether management followed the rules on discipline, scheduling, or time off. It also gives shop stewards and union reps a common baseline when they push a grievance through the system.

The fine print still matters after the headline deal

Even after the national agreement was announced, smaller disputes did not disappear. In April 2025, Costco fleet drivers in Sumner, Washington ratified their first contract, and Teamsters said it included retroactive wage increases back to September 1, 2024. By June 2025, Teamsters filed a wage-theft complaint saying Costco had not yet paid those retroactive increases.

That matters for any Costco worker who assumes one headline agreement settles everything. The lesson is to read the effective dates, check whether retroactive pay is owed, and confirm how the grievance process works if the company does not pay on time. The national agreement may set the floor, but local enforcement is what turns the paper promise into money in the paycheck.

For Costco union workers, the contract is most useful when it is treated like a map: pay here, time off there, grievances over here, and job protections in the next section. When a problem comes up, the fastest route is usually to the clause that governs the specific issue, because that is where the real power of the agreement lives.