Job Action Continues a 2nd Day

As union picketing in front of Southern California supermarkets entered its second full day Monday, shoppers found deserted aisles, closed departments and more than a few delays, with novice replacement workers logging their first hours behind the cash register.

Grocery employees belonging to the United Food and Commercial Workers Union launched a strike at Safeway Inc.’s Vons stores late Saturday night. Workers at Kroger Co.’s Ralphs chain and Albertsons Inc. stores, who share the same union pact, then were locked out of their stores early Sunday.

Pickets circling the stores continued to depress business Monday, leaving at least some locations with teams of replacement workers serving only a dozen or so shoppers at any one time. Many of the workers were hired and trained the same day, receiving at most a couple of hours of preparation in running the cash registers.

Their inexperience proved frustrating to shoppers who ventured across the picket lines to buy groceries.

At one Vons store on 3rd Street near South Vermont Avenue, a replacement worker struggled to process Lashonda Holloway’s food stamps, calling a manager for assistance and asking the shopper behind her to move her groceries to another line.

“You just can’t come to the store if you have something to do at a particular time,” Holloway said.

“I’ll be glad when they settle everything.”

Across the street at a Ralphs, the fish counter was shuttered and the five open check stands were moving slowly.

In all, 859 stores and 70,000 workers in Southern California and parts of Central California are affected by the labor strife. Company and union representatives broke off contract talks Saturday, and no date has been set to resume negotiations.

The supermarkets are proposing a wage freeze and cuts to health and pension benefits for current UFCW members and a substantially lower wage and benefit package for new hires. They say they must win those concessions to compete with emerging rivals, including discounter Wal-Mart Stores Inc., which is nonunion.

For their part, UFCW negotiators are seeking hourly wage increases of 50 cents the first year and 45 cents each of the following two years. Veteran clerks and stockers now earn as much as $17.90 an hour. Baggers earn up to $7.40 an hour.

The picketing has sent a flurry of new business in the last two days to Stater Bros., Arden Group Inc.’s Gelson’s, Kroger’s Food 4 Less and Trader Joe’s, which either are nonunion or have signed accords with the UFCW under which they’ve agreed to abide by whatever pact is made with the three big chains.

“There’s more customer traffic than usual, and people are buying a lot of basic groceries,” said Pat St. John, a spokeswoman for Monrovia-based Trader Joe’s.

She added that store managers have begun increasing their orders of produce, milk and other staples to keep up with increased demand.

Sylvia Nystul, a 38-year-old Pasadena homemaker, was late picking up one of her three children Monday. Nonetheless, she drove the extra way to the Trader Joe’s on Arroyo Parkway to buy toilet tissue, cereal, fruit and juice because she didn’t want to shop at Vons or Ralphs.

“I’m not going to cross the picket lines,” she said. “It hurts the union and these employees when they can’t get their needs addressed.

“It’s a little inconvenient, and I have to go out of my way to come here,” she continued, “but I’ll keep coming here till they settle the strike. I don’t mind the extra expense.”

Suppliers to Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons said the chains had been counting on losing quite a bit of business and had reduced their orders for many items, particularly fruits and vegetables, fearing that they would wind up sitting in warehouses and rotting.

“I think the chains are worried about perishable goods they could have trouble getting offloaded,” said Dan Crowley, a sales manager for Watsonville, Calif.-based Well-Pict Inc., which supplies fresh strawberries and raspberries. He noted that his company’s orders were off by 60% to 70% in Southern California.

Still, though the strike has caused some disruption for produce distributors, most say the financial effect so far has been minimal. For now, they are making up for the decline in shipments to the Southern California grocery chains by moving their goods to other markets.

Most of the stores being picketed, meanwhile, remained fully stocked as store managers helped back up trucks and vendors pitched in.

Frieda’s Inc., a Los Alamitos distributor of specialty produce such as kumquats and persimmons, dispatched several of its 125 employees to help unload trucks and stock shelves for the large chains. “They requested our help, and it is in all of our best interests to help the retailers get through this,” said Tristan Millar, the company’s director of marketing and business development.

Not all deliveries went off without a hitch, however.

Outside the Ralphs store on 3rd Street, cars were backed up on both sides of the road as a delivery truck idled across all lanes but one.

A Teamsters driver, who like the rest of those in his union had refused to cross the supermarket employees’ picket line, shook his head as a replacement driver tried to coax the giant vehicle into the market’s lot. First, pickets blocked his path. Once they moved away, the oddly twisted truck still didn’t budge. When it finally did make it into the Ralphs lot, the truck lingered there, further delaying other stops the Teamsters driver, Aniseli Teofilo, was scheduled to make.

Supermarket executives say it is too early to tell whether the three chains will have problems keeping their shelves stocked. For now at least, most of the chains say their operations are faring better than expected.

“We did a lot of pre-planning,” said Ralphs spokesman Terry O’Neil. “Things are going more smoothly than we had anticipated.”

Ralphs has hired more than 10,000 replacement workers. In addition, 400 more-experienced clerks, warehouse workers and managers have been brought in from other Kroger divisions around the country to supervise the replacements.

“You will notice as the days go on,” O’Neil said, “that those departments that have been shut down or offered limited service will be back. We are working quickly to bring every one of our stores back to our regular operating hours.”

Vons, which initially limited its store hours to 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., has since expanded those hours to 7 a.m. to 10 p.m. as it has hired more replacement workers.

Although both sides remained far apart on contract terms, relations between at least some store managers and their picketing employees seemed to remain cordial.

At the Vons on 3rd Street, a district manager sent over bottles of water for the strikers and assistant store manager Ron Avilla came out of the store bearing Popsicles for the picket line.

“This is hard for everyone -- the community, the workers and us,” Avilla said, as workers crowded around him to grab a cold treat.

“Do you miss us?” some asked.

“Of course I miss you,” he said. “But you’re still right here.”

Times staff writer Jerry Hirsch contributed to this report.