Workers Picket Ralphs Markets, Urge Customers to Boycott Stores
Bolstered by an unfair labor practice complaint filed by the National Labor Relations Board against Ralphs Grocery Co., supermarket workers began picketing some of the store’s Orange County outlets this week as a first step in what union leaders say will be a broadening effort to urge a boycott of the stores by customers.
The 1 1/2-year feud between Ralphs and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union is turning into a “real war,” said union spokesman Robert Bleiweiss Friday.
The union charges that Ralphs is trying to break the union by engaging in such alleged contract violations as reducing workers’ hours, lowering wage classifications and laying off workers. The company denies any contract violations and says little more than 200 employees are affected by cost-cutting changes. Ralphs employs about 12,000 workers, about 8,000 of whom are union members, at 126 stores in Southern California.
While the union’s informational pickets are protesting company actions as unfair, the company is reviewing the union’s activities to determine if it is violating the year-old contract by engaging in an unlawful boycott, said Gene Brown, a senior vice president at Ralphs.
“This (feud) is no minor dispute over 10 cents an hour,” Bleiweiss said. “It involves millions of dollars and 50,000 union members in grocery stores from San Luis Obispo to the Nevada border to San Diego.
“If Ralphs wins this, the other grocery stores are not going to stand by and pay $4 an hour more while Ralphs clobbers them in the labor area,” he said.
Brown scoffed at the comment, saying the issues were “not a matter to deal with on an emotional basis.” He said the disputes involve claims of contract violations only. Brown said the company will contest the labor practice complaint before an NLRB judge.
Brown said the company was following the contract in assigning work and was trying to resolve issues through arbitration.
Each side accused the other of delaying arbitration hearings.
Ralphs’ union wages range from $4 an hour for a starting apprentice clerk’s helper to $12 an hour for a journeyman food clerk. The experienced general merchandising clerk, the category the union claims food clerks are being reassigned to, gets $7.80 an hour.
In late July, the union, through eight locals that represent Ralphs employees, announced it was starting a boycott effort with a distribution of leaflets and a mail campaign. Until Wednesday, the effort was limited mainly to San Diego County, where Local 1222 budgeted $50,000 for newspaper advertising.
Learned of NLRB Action
But Local 324 in Buena Park, which represents 2,078 workers at 40 Ralphs stores in Orange County and southern Los Angeles County, learned Aug. 2 that the NLRB was acting on its claim of an unfair labor practice by filing a complaint against Ralphs.
The complaint fueled the local’s boycott plans, said Local 324 president John C. Sperry, and prompted the informational picketing beginning Wednesday at Ralphs stores in Fullerton and Anaheim and at stores in Garden Grove, Anaheim and Stanton the next two days. He said picketing will continue at different stores every day.
“The purpose of the roving picket lines is to inform the public of Ralphs’ unfair labor practice,” Sperry said. Bleiweiss said the pickets are urging customers to shop elsewhere.
While Sperry claimed Friday afternoon that three days of picketing produced a “tremendous response” from the public, Brown would not comment yet on what effect the boycott was having on sales because the union effort was just starting.
The NLRB complaint is based on Local 324 claims that Ralphs is violating the contract by refusing to turn over to the union the time and payroll records of a number of employees. The local is seeking the information to support its claim that Ralphs was wrongly laying off employees or forcing them to accept lower-paying jobs.
“We found that the information sought was relevant to the union’s performance of its function as the representative of the employees,” said acting NLRB regional director Leonard Bernstein.
Will Fight Complaint
Ralphs will fight the complaint at an Oct 3 hearing before an NLRB administrative law judge, Brown said.
“We responded appropriately” to the union requests, he said, pointing out that the filing of the complaint does not mean Ralphs was unfair to its employees. The NLRB judge will determine if the company committed any unfair labor practice, he said.
The NLRB complaint is the second the federal agency has taken up on behalf of the workers in the long feud, Bleiweiss said. Last month, the agency filed a complaint on behalf of Local 1222, Sperry said.
More than 100 other union grievances have not reached arbitration or the NLRB, Sperry said.
The much-delayed first arbitration hearing, for instance, is scheduled to begin Monday over the union’s claim that Ralphs is using general merchandising clerks to do the work of higher-paid food clerks without paying them higher wages.
