Ralphs and Food Clerks Break Off Informal Talks

Informal talks to resolve an ongoing dispute between Ralphs supermarkets and its disgruntled food clerks broke off Thursday, and union leaders promised “to take their case to the consumer” by distributing leaflets at the supermarket chain’s 126 Southern California stores.

“We’re going to demonstrate in front of the stores,” said John C. Sperry, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 324 and a spokesman for the eight Southern California union locals involved in the dispute with Compton-based Ralphs, a unit of Federated Department Stores. “We’ve got to make a public appeal.”

Ralphs and UFCW officials have been haggling for the last several months over the supermarket’s continuing efforts to reduce the number of food clerks, who earn a top hourly salary of $11.80, and replace them with general merchandise clerks, who earn a maximum of $7.67 per hour. The union contends that the practice, which it says has already affected at least 1,800 of the company’s 11,600 employees, violates the current labor contract.

However, Byron Allumbaugh, Ralphs chairman and chief executive, defended the practice and claimed that it is allowed by the contract.

Despite the leaflet threat, Allumbaugh said the company will continue to try to reduce its labor costs by using lower-paid workers whenever possible.

“Leafletting doesn’t bother us,” he said. “Our customers could care less.”

Allumbaugh claimed that other supermarkets have employed the same labor practices over the last 3 1/2 years. Ralphs, he said, has been singled out by the union because it started the practice more recently and is trying to compress more of them into a shorter period. “It’s just showing up more with us,” he said.