Supermarket Executives Descend on Washington

ARLINGTON, VA – April 14, 2015 – Food Marketing Institute (FMI) and the National Grocers Association (NGA) announce their annual Day in Washington congressional fly-in, Wednesday, April 15 – Thursday, April 16, with more than 200 expected attendees representing the supermarket industry and its 3.4 million workers.

FMI and NGA members have and estimated 230 scheduled appointments on Capitol Hill to share their business cases related to six priority issue areas:

1. Menu Labeling: FDA needs to provide additional time for the supermarket industry to receive and review agency guidance and delay enforcement/compliance date for menu labeling at supermarkets, grocery stores and similar retail food establishments and move the enforcement date to December 1, 2016 at the earliest. The supermarket industry strongly supported the Common Sense Nutrition Disclosure Act in the 113th Congress, and will lend support to similar legislation upon introduction in this Congress. In addition, we have requested an extension from FDA and will work with the agency to work towards a more a more reasonable implementation time.
2. Health Care: The supermarket industry continues to seek flexibility and ways to minimize new burdens under the ACA in order for food retailers and wholesalers to continue providing quality health coverage that is affordable to both the employee and the employer. We support several bipartisan pieces of legislation focused in these areas.
3. Swipe Fee Reform: Protecting the legislative victory on debit card swipe fee reforms continues to be an important priority for supermarkets. FMI and NGA will strongly oppose any legislation that would repeal or weaken the debit card swipe fee reforms that have benefited the American consumer and businesses.
4. Data Security: In addition to creating a national standard, all links in the payments chain must commit to reducing the value of this information to the criminals on the front-end. Grocers are encouraged by emerging solutions that devalue payment card data making it unusable for criminals, such as end-to-end encryption, tokenization, and elimination of the easily counterfeitable magnetic stripe. We are working with the authors of legislation to include these elements in their legislation.
5. Tax Reform: The industry has much to gain from broad-based, balanced and comprehensive tax reform that lowers effective rates and simplifies the tax code for C-corporations and pass-throughs. Tax extenders, the estate tax and marketplace fairness and Last-in-first-out (LIFO) accounting method, are all major issues for food retailers under tax reform.
6. Labor Policy: The supermarket industry and the rest of the employer community are faced with the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) final rule relating to union representation election procedures, the so-called “ambush elections” regulation going into effect on April 14, and the Department of Labor’s (DOL) highly anticipated initiative on overtime rules.