Grocers, Union in Bay Area Reach Deal

Three major supermarket chains and the union representing 30,000 grocery workers in the Bay Area have reached a tentative agreement on a new contract that may have been influenced by the crippling supermarket strike in Central and Southern California a year ago.

The contract doesn’t include a two-tier wage system, which locks new hires into a lower pay scale and lesser benefits than veterans, union officials said Monday, though new hires would wait longer to reach top pay and receive maximum benefits.

The two-tier concession was the most controversial one the United Food and Commercial Workers union made to end the 4 1/2-month-long strike and lock-out in Central and Southern California.

In another difference, the Southern California contract approved in February requires some workers to chip in for health benefits, whereas the proposed Bay Area pact does not.

“Unfortunately for the folks in Southern California, ever since that struggle we’ve seen contracts getting better,” said Ron Lind, a spokesman for the union. He called the Bay Area deal “the best that’s taken place in the country in the last year and a half.”

Albertsons Inc. and Safeway Inc. said in a statement that they were pleased with the proposed contract but were mum on the details. Kroger Co. did not return calls seeking comment.

The accord came on the eve of a deadline that the UFCW’s Bay Area Coalition had set to ratchet up pressure on the chains. Lind said the organization had obtained 80,000 cards signed by customers pledging to honor a boycott if one were called.

Union members will vote on the proposed deal over the next three weeks.

They may owe their comparatively better deal to the sacrifices of their Central and Southern California counterparts. “Supermarket workers across the country have benefited from the Los Angeles experience,” said Kent Wong, director of UCLA’s Center for Labor Research and Education.

This month, a contract similar to the proposed Bay Area deal was approved by union employees in Central Valley and Northern California stores.

During last year’s strike and lockout, the three supermarket chains said they needed to cut labor costs to compete with non-union supermarkets operated by Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Ultimately the companies wrung concessions from their workers, but in the process the chains suffered $1.5 billion in lost sales, and they have yet to win back all the customers who defected during the dispute.

“It may be that employers feared the cost of conflict” in the Bay Area, said William Gould, a former chairman of the National Labor Relations Board and an emeritus professor of law at Stanford University.

Bay Area UFCW locals may also have been under pressure to avoid a contract similar to the one reached in Central and Southern California, Gould said, which “stiffened the resolve of the union.”

Both sides certainly had reason to be less hard-lined in negotiations, said Alec Levenson, a USC labor economist. “One of the most important things that the unions accomplished in Southern California was making it clear to management that they were quite serious about going out on strike.”

News of the proposed contract had mixed results on Wall Street. Albertsons shares fell 5 cents to $22.42; Kroger shares rose 19 cents to $17 and Safeway shares climbed 32 cents to $18.69. All three trade on the New York Stock Exchange.

Separately on Monday, a federal judge in Los Angeles heard arguments on a request to unseal documents relating to a mutual-aid pact signed by the three supermarket chains during the Central and Southern California strike and lockout.

California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer has alleged that the pact, in which the stores agreed to share an undisclosed sum to help one another during the dispute, violated federal antitrust laws.

U.S. District Judge George H. King is expected to issue a decision this week.

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Times staff writer Julie Tamaki contributed to this report.