Found some info on various sites. The average Safeway salary in the United States is $32,976 per year. Safeway salaries range between $27,000 a year in the bottom 10th percentile to $39,000 in the top 90th percentile. Safeway pays $15.85 an hour on average. Geographic location also impacts Safeway salaries. Safeway employees in Yakima, WA get paid the most. California’s minimum wage is $16.50 per hour. (Strike is happening out in CA.) Most of the data I am finding is taking the average across the whole country, which doesn’t take into account the higher min wage in CA. We can safely say that the floor for safeway workers out there should be $16.50 hourly in CA based on state law, and I imagine that someone working checkout, bagging, or the customer service desk isn’t making $27 an hour. Per Zip recruiter: As of Jul 15, 2025, the average hourly pay for a Safeway Employee in California is $12.43 an hour. While ZipRecruiter is seeing salaries as high as $15.66 and as low as $7.59, the majority of Safeway Employee salaries currently range between $10.67 (25th percentile) to $14.23 (75th percentile) in California. The average pay range for a Safeway Employee varies little (about 3), which suggests that regardless of location, there are not many opportunities for increased pay or advancement, even with several years of experience.
Basically, Safeway is paying higher wages to scabs because they think they can outlast their workers who will be on strike with scab labor. In theory, when the strike comes to an end, all the scabs would be out of a job. Higher wages for the scabs is supposed to offset the instability of their employment with Safeway. If the strike goes on long enough, theoretically, Safeway will cross a financial line where the scabs end up costing more than just giving workers a fair deal.
It is. Many retail jobs like this maintain the same requirement; be available all the time, but we won’t schedule you enough hours to qualify for benefits or be able to afford rent.