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Governor Willing to Intervene in Strike

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Times staff writer

Can Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger end the nearly 4-month-old supermarket strike?

In a KNX-AM radio interview Monday, the governor said he needed an invitation to try.

“If they call me and ask me to intervene and to be an intermediary, I’m more than happy to do that, because I think that we need to have everyone go back to work and normalize the situation,” he said.

That was news to Miguel Contreras, secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, who said he had been working for weeks behind the scenes with state Democrats and national labor leaders to try to pull the governor into the stalled talks. Contreras spent about $100,000 of the federation’s budget to gather signatures on petitions asking the governor to weigh in. He said the petitions were mailed nearly two months ago to Schwarzenegger’s office but they elicited no response.

Vince Sollitto, a spokesman for the governor, said Monday that he was unable to confirm that the petitions had made it to the governor’s office. Sollitto said he believed Schwarzenegger’s remarks on radio were his first public comments on the labor dispute.

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Rick Icaza, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770 in Los Angeles, the largest of seven locals involved in the strike and lockout, said: “We would welcome his involvement. Hopefully that would jump-start negotiations.”

Other union leaders weren’t so sure. They noted that Safeway Inc., the Pleasanton, Calif.-based owner of Vons and Pavilions, was a contributor to Schwarzenegger’s campaign. State records show Safeway gave the maximum of $21,200 to Schwarzenegger’s campaign for governor on Nov. 10, more than a month after the election.

“I would be very cautious about asking him to get involved,” said Connie Leyva, president of UFCW Local 1428 in Claremont. “I would question his neutrality.”

No one at Safeway was immediately available for comment; nor could anyone be reached late Monday at Ralphs’ parent company, Kroger Co. of Cincinnati. A spokesman for Albertsons Inc., based in Boise, Idaho, declined to comment about Schwarzenegger’s possible intervention.

In the brief radio interview, Schwarzenegger said he would prefer the union and the chains break the impasse themselves. “Right now I’ll let them try to hammer it out, because there are some smart people there that are working on that,” the governor said. “And you see, with all of those kinds of conflicts, it all has to do with the willingness to solve the problem. I think they’re smart enough to figure out how to solve the problem. It’s just, are they willing?”

The two sides haven’t held formal talks in more than a month, and none were scheduled as of Monday.

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Times staff writer Jeffrey L. Rabin contributed to this report.

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