UFCW grocery workers vote on strike authorization

Grocery workers in Southern and Central California are voting Monday and Tuesday on whether they’ll authorize their union to call a strike at the region’s major supermarket chains.

After months of fruitless contract negotiations with Albertsons, Vons, Pavilions and Ralphs, the seven locals of United Food and Commercial Workers are holding membership meetings where strike votes are being tallied.

Authorizing a strike doesn’t mean there will be any labor action, but it does indicate the union’s dissatisfaction with the negotiations, which started almost four months ago. The vote is also designed to put pressure on the employers, with the next three-day round of negotiations scheduled to start on July 10.

Meetings on Monday for Local 324, which represents Orange County workers, saw a packed auditorium with a charged-up membership, said Greg Conger, the local’s president.

Conger said the turnouts and the level of enthusiasm were on par with the reactions in 2003 and 2004 when that decade’s contract cycle quickly devolved into a strike and lockout that lasted more than four months. He said many members on Monday criticized store executives whom they say are low-balling their employees.

“The chains’ bargainers at the table don’t care about what the employees think, and the employees are angry,” Conger said. “The chains just want to save as much money as possible.”

Joe Duffle, president of Inland Empire-based Local 1167, also said turnouts have been strong and workers are angry. “The cost of living keeps going up, and our wages are not keeping pace,” he said.

John Votava, director of corporate affairs for Ralphs, said the company  “has a contingency plan in place to ensure our stores remain open” should a strike take place.

Representatives of Albertsons, Vons and Pavilions, all owned by New York City-based private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management, did not respond to requests for comment.

UFCW claims the latest contract offer would cut salaries for general merchandise clerks and also reduce the pay of cashiers by downgrading their job classifications. Other workers would see pay raises of less than 1%.

Also, the union said the chains want to cut funding to the health care plan to the point where it could go bankrupt.

Mike Shimpock. a spokesman for Los Angeles-based Local 770, said Ralphs’ parent company Kroger Co. had promised to use tax cuts enacted under President Donald Trump to benefit employees.

“Instead they gave raises of between 20% to 34% to its top executives, and offer the employees less than 1%,” Shimpock said.

Meanwhile, it was business as usual at more than 500 stores in Southern California affected by this week’s vote.

“Nobody’s panicking. We’re going about our business because this is what we do,” said Frank Baca, produce manager and union shop steward at the Vons location in Riverside Plaza, who was on his lunch break Monday. “We’ve been through this before, we’ve been through it hard.”