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Grocery union readies workers for more strikes

By Alex Veiga
The Associated Press

	AP Grocery worker Donna Leon rips up her picket sign last month in Garden Grove, Calif.
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LOS ANGELES — As Southern California grocery workers return to work after their long strike-lockout, union leaders are already discussing how to tackle negotiations for more than a dozen other contracts expiring over the next several months.

Many of the contracts, covering roughly 187,000 grocery clerks, involve one or all of the same companies that were targeted in the Southern California strike: Albertsons, Kroger and Safeway.

But regardless of any mutual understanding that might have developed by the time the 4-1/2-month-long Southern California strike was settled, union officials warn it's not going to make much difference in future negotiations and say they are gearing their members up for other strikes, if needed.

"You cannot say that the settlement in Southern California sets the stage for settlements everywhere. ... What it did do is mobilize our local unions for a potential fight," said Greg Denier, national spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).

"If the employers continue to pursue an aggressive strategy and present unreasonable demands as they did in Southern California, they're inviting labor disputes across the country."

A dispute could lie ahead in Western Washington, where grocery-worker contracts at the same chains expire May 2.

On Feb. 29, the same day Southern California UFCW members ratified their contract, five unions representing some 25,000 grocery workers from Bellingham to Olympia issued a statement saying the California deal "goes too far and will be unacceptable to our members."

Kirkland-based Allied Employers, a labor-relations firm representing the grocery chains in the Washington negotiations, says it remains optimistic the sides can reach a deal without a strike.

Two separate contracts covering nearly 43,000 workers in Northern and Central California expire in July and September. Contracts in Phoenix, Indianapolis and Chicago, which have expired, were temporarily extended. The contract covering the largest single group of employees — 29,000 workers in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. — ends March 27.
 
In a message posted on a Web site for San Francisco-area grocery employees, the union advises its members that the Southern California strike was "just the first battle in a much larger war," and that their contract will soon become the next front.

"Everybody is preparing for disputes and for fights," Denier said.

The UFCW will be able to back up threats of a strike in coming negotiations by pointing to how it kept Southern California members out of the stores until a compromise was reached. But labor experts say the financial hit absorbed by the workers might make employees elsewhere think twice about supporting a walkout.

"This was the longest and most contentious and largest strike in supermarket history," said Kent Wong, director of the Labor Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. "This will cause more supermarket workers in other parts of the country to carefully weigh what is being proposed in relation to the strike vote and what the plan is for winning a strike."

The supermarket chains will also have to consider whether they can endure the losses of another large strike.

Estimates put the companies' losses between $1.5 billion and $2.5 billion in sales, and they now face additional costs as they try to woo shoppers away from competitors and back to their stores.

"They lost public support, they antagonized their work force, they really completely undermined the good will that had been built up over the years between labor and management in the industry," Wong said. "There's enough lead time between now and the next contract negotiations to really try to change the dynamic."

Union leaders ordered the strike against Safeway's Vons and Pavilions chains on Oct. 11. Albertsons and Ralphs, a unit of Kroger, then locked out their employees. In all, about 59,000 workers were idled at 859 stores.

The final contract, which covers 70,000 workers and was overwhelmingly approved by union members on Feb. 29, split employees into separate wage and benefit classes, with new hires to receive less pay and fewer benefits than veteran employees.

The contract requires employees to pay for health benefits for the first time and includes two one-time bonuses for hours already worked. The contract offers no raises.

The supermarket operators, under pressure to remain competitive against big-box retailers like Wal-Mart, are expected to push for similar concessions in coming talks.

Union officials won't give specifics but concede they learned hard lessons during the strike and plan to do some things differently next time, starting with winning the battle for the hearts and minds of the public.

During the dispute, the supermarket chains ran full-page ads in newspapers and tried to define the workers as overpaid beneficiaries of free health insurance who unreasonably refused to share even a small part of the costs.

The union also will focus on Wall Street.

"We need to be far more aggressive in communicating with the investment community," Denier said. "They gave (Safeway Chief Executive) Steve Burd the benefit of the doubt. The message he was delivering is it would be a very short strike ... and they bought that."

Calls to Albertsons and Kroger were not returned. Safeway spokesman David Bowlby declined to discuss pending bargaining issues but said "every labor contract is unique, and the competitive elements differ by market."

Information from Seattle Times business reporter Jake Batsell is included in this report.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company