Lengthy Strike Shows Evolution of Union Hasn’t Kept Up With Rise of Grocery Giants

The union pickets at my neighborhood Vons were putting up a chipper front when I visited with them the other night. Earlier that day, the AFL-CIO had decided to elevate their contract dispute with the supermarkets into a national cause, and they were chuffed by this vivid, if belated, sign of labor solidarity.

“We all have our own personal battles,” Bob Mitchell, the picket captain, told me, citing one colleague with school tuition coming due and no paycheck coming in, and another with a laid-off spouse. “Emotionally, though, we’re tough as nails.”

But it was hard not to detect in his words a certain undertone of smiling through the apocalypse. The dispute, in which the United Food and Commercial Workers struck the Vons and Pavilions stores of Safeway Inc. and were locked out by Kroger Co.’s Ralphs and Albertsons Inc., started Oct. 11. It has now stretched on without visible progress for 104 days, or longer than Wellington needed to chase Napoleon from Elba to Waterloo and put him permanently out of business.

At this stage, it’s impossible to tell when this tussle might end, or how much the workers might have to concede in a settlement. (It’s reasonable to assume that they’ll have to give in on something.) But it’s not too early to judge what the course of the dispute says about the condition of the American labor movement today: It’s pitiful.

The UFCW’s regional locals, to start with, vastly underestimated their opponents in this fight. When talks opened in August, union leaders told me, they were blindsided by the depth of the cuts demanded by the supermarket chains in health care and other provisions.

Since then, things have only gotten worse. Union workers not only have gone without pay, most have lost their health benefits and seen their strike benefits cut. When the companies came back to the bargaining table in December after a long siesta, their new offer was worse than their original. It’s estimated that the three chains have forgone more than $1 billion in sales during the fight, but because they record combined revenue of more than $121 billion a year, it may be a while before they judge their investment in beating down the unions to be a poor one.

All the while, the unions have been surprised at the three companies’ ability to stay united against the workers. That means they’ve underestimated Safeway Chairman Steven A. Burd, who is spearheading the assault.

“We didn’t think Burd had the personality to hold it together,” says Greg Conger, president of Orange County-based Local 324, which represents 13,000 workers at the three companies.

The locals, and their brethren at UFCW headquarters, also have misunderstood the implications of changes in the supermarket industry over the last decade or so. Put succinctly, what were once small local chains have evolved into major corporations.

“Fifteen years ago, we were dealing with regional supermarkets,” says Rick Icaza, president of Local 770 in Los Angeles. “Back then, this strike would not have taken place, and if it did take place, it wouldn’t have lasted 30 days.”

But the nationwide consolidation of the supermarket business didn’t occur overnight; it has been going on for most of those 15 years, and by no means secretly.

The union has not adapted to meet the challenge. The upshot is that a group of regional bargaining units are overmatched by three nationwide chains, which can continue raking in profits around the country while their Southern California locations are bereft of shoppers. Icaza and Conger say they’re surprised at the absence of the collegial we-can-work-it-out atmosphere that prevailed at negotiations in past contract cycles. Yet that’s what happens when labor policy is made not by executives who live in the same communities where they’ve provoked a labor war, but by corporate bureaucrats ensconced thousands of miles away.

The union locals also failed to communicate the issues clearly to supermarket customers, especially in the early stage of the dispute. Back then, the terms of public debate seemed to be dictated by philistines like KFI-AM (640) talk-radio hosts John and Ken, whom I heard one day grotesquely misrepresenting the implications of the contract offer on the air and cracking wise about the union pickets.

It has taken months for the locals to dispose of the canard, promoted by the supermarkets, that the fight is about asking the workers to pay a little out of their own pockets for health care, when it’s really about an attempt to sharply reduce the level of health benefits overall, especially for new hires.

No one’s denying that the arcane details of health benefits are difficult to communicate. But the idea that this contract is symptomatic of attempts by employers around the country to push health-care costs onto their employees is easy to grasp. It should have been at the core of the union’s campaign to win public sympathy from the start.

The union should also have worked harder to deflate the supermarkets’ claim that they need labor concessions to battle the incursion of low-wage, nonunion retailers like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. -- a threat that is grossly exaggerated, particularly in California, and in any case dwarfed by the financial losses that executives such as Burd have incurred through their own mismanagement.

As a result, the real depth of the public’s support for the workers is hard to gauge. Union leaders contend that the absence of shoppers proves that the public is behind their members, but no one can say whether customers are staying away because they feel deeply about the contract issues or simply to avoid confrontations with the pickets. If it’s the latter, then it will be harder to retain that support for the months that may yet elapse before a settlement.

One important question is why the national labor establishment has taken so long to get involved. Richard Trumka, the AFL-CIO leader who will take over national strategy in the supermarket battle, says it was only in the last month that the AFL-CIO brass recognized its “significant strategic importance to the labor movement.”

But employer-provided health care has been on the table in scores of labor talks in recent years. If the AFL-CIO has developed a model position for its member unions on the issue, it has been kept under wraps. The labor federation also has failed to respond to the consolidation of American business, which turns regional companies into units of global enterprises and warps the balance of power in any local job action. “The movement’s probably a little behind the curve on that,” Trumka acknowledges.

It will be interesting to see whether Big Labor’s entry into this fight will finally produce a worthwhile settlement. From the workers’ standpoint, there are a few small positive glimmerings. A string of contracts with the three chains is expiring over the next few months, including pacts in Denver, Chicago, Washington and Las Vegas. The Northern California contracts come up in July. If strikes drive away shoppers across the nation, the chains’ smugness might evaporate.

There are also signs that Wall Street, which goaded the supermarkets into this fight, has wearied of the fun. This week, Smith Barney issued a “sell” recommendation on Safeway stock, citing, among other things, Burd’s “heavy-handed” approach to labor.

The firm estimated that 5% of Safeway’s lost sales may never come back, and that it would take more than two years of savings from the company’s proposed labor contract to make up for the losses it already has incurred. “Any concessions gained in California we would view as coming at a high price,” the firm’s analyst wrote.

She was concerned with the toll on Safeway shareholders, but she might just as well have been referring to the labor movement’s reputation.

Golden State appears every Monday and Thursday. You can reach Michael Hiltzik at golden.state@latimes.com and read his previous columns at latimes.com/hiltzik.