Strike’s Strategy Is On the Line

When labor leaders from across the country gather in Los Angeles today to discuss the supermarket strike, they’ll be looking for something that has so far proved elusive: a winning strategy.

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and dozens of officials with the United Food and Commercial Workers union will assemble at the Century Plaza Hotel for the meeting, which was called last week by UFCW President Doug Dority after contract talks collapsed.

The meeting is to be followed at noon by a march by thousands of strikers and their supporters from the hotel to a Pavilions store in Beverly Hills.

Though they publicly professed support for the seven UFCW locals in Central and Southern California, some labor leaders have been privately critical of the union’s tactics, saying they lacked imagination and haven’t been sufficiently militant.

The leaders also have complained that the UFCW had failed to clearly articulate the contract issues.

“To breathe new momentum into this, the fight needs to be much broader and more public in terms of what it’s all about,” said one veteran of civil disobedience. “We also need to look at other strategies, like using pension money as leverage.”

Another labor leader said the union should do more to call on its political allies. “All along, we’ve suggested they up the ante,” said the union leader. “We’ve been wanting them to be more aggressive. [Safeway Chief Executive] Steve Burd shouldn’t be able to sleep at night.”

The strike started Oct. 11, when workers staged a walkout at Safeway Inc.’s Vons and Pavilions stores. The next day, Albertsons Inc. and Ralphs, a unit of Kroger Co., which bargain jointly with Safeway, locked out their workers. Talks have produced little movement, even though the stores and some 70,000 union members have taken deep financial hits.

Initially, UFCW leaders ran a traditional strike, putting up pickets and counting on consumers to stay out of the stores. They have, to a greater degree than even union officials had expected.

Yet that seemed only to toughen the supermarkets’ resolve. The union has taken other steps over time, sending pickets to Safeway stores in Northern California and Washington, D.C., and staging a conference call with financial analysts who follow supermarket stocks.

In late November, the UFCW persuaded the Teamsters to add their heft to the strike by not crossing picket lines at supermarket distribution centers. That sidelined 8,000 Teamster drivers and warehouse workers, a move that many thought would force the employers to accept concessions.

But that hasn’t happened.

“It’s a real challenge,” said Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Labor Center. “They seem to be exploring all possible options at this point. But you can only do so much. Ultimately you can’t have a collective bargaining agreement unless both parties are willing to compromise.”

Negotiations are set to resume Friday, a federal mediator said Monday.

The two sides have been at loggerheads over two key issues: employer proposals to cut health benefits and to create a substantially lower pay scale for new hires, which the employers said they needed to compete with Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Today’s gathering is part fundraiser, as the seven UFCW locals seek help in rebuilding their depleted strike funds. But local union officials, who haven’t been through a strike in 25 years, also said they wanted fresh ideas.

“What happens to us is obviously going to impact everybody,” said Rick Icaza, president of UFCW Local 770 in Los Angeles. “If we lose here, no contract will be sacred.”

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On February 12, 2004 the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which had stated repeatedly that 70,000 workers were involved in the supermarket labor dispute in Central and Southern California, said that the number of people on strike or locked out was actually 59,000. A union spokeswoman, Barbara Maynard, said that 70,000 UFCW members were, in fact, covered by the labor contract with supermarkets that expired last year. But 11,000 of them worked for Stater Bros. Holdings Inc., Arden Group Inc.’s Gelson’s and other regional grocery companies and were still on the job. (See: “UFCW Revises Number of Workers in Labor Dispute,” Los Angeles Times, February 13, 2004, Business C-11)

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