Both Sides Predict Lengthy, Wider Supermarket Strike

A strike by 10,000 meat cutters and 12,000 Teamsters against Southern California supermarkets got off to a slow start Tuesday. In Orange County, at least, meat was as plentiful as pickets for most of the day.

However, both sides predicted that the dispute will expand today and will begin to be felt by shoppers by Thursday. Both sides said they expect a long strike.

Picketing began at 164 Vons stores, but company officials and striking union members agreed that support from retail clerks--considered crucial to the strike’s effectiveness--was spotty, with many crossing picket lines. Vons had been designated by the unions as the target store at which to begin the strike.

The Food Employers Council, which has represented most of the major supermarket chains in negotiations with the meat cutters and Teamsters, said eight other chains started locking out members of both striking unions late Tuesday.

“When you strike one of us, you strike all of us,” said Bob Voigt, a Food Employers Council spokesman.

In Irvine and Fullerton, two bomb scares occurred at Lucky Supermarket facilities Tuesday evening, apparently in connection with the strike, police said.

Fullerton police evacuated the Lucky Supermarket at 333 N. Euclid St. after receiving a bomb threat at about 5:30 p.m. Two fake pipe bombs were found sitting on a shelf in the cereal section of the market, police said. The store reopened after the devices were removed.

About three hours later in Irvine, security guards at a Lucky warehouse at 9300 Toledo Way found a flare underneath a truck. Police did not know if the stick was dynamite or a flare and called the bomb squad, which determined it was a used flare, Irvine police said.

Voigt said he expected that picketing would start today at Albertson’s, Alpha Beta, Foods Co., Hughes, Lucky, Ralphs, Safeway and Stater Bros. stores. That would bring 1,080 stores from the Mexican border to Santa Barbara into the dispute.

Boys Markets, which operates 42 stores in Southern California, and Pioneer Markets, with three stores, signed interim agreements with the unions Monday, meaning that they will not be struck. Both markets agreed to abide by whatever contract is ultimately reached between the unions and the Food Employers Council. Earlier, Gelson’s, Mayfair and Big Bear signed such agreements.

There was little evidence of meat shortages at Orange County supermarkets on Tuesday. Many stores had their meat cutters doing extra duty over the weekend.

And in some cases, managers simply donned white wraparounds and butcher caps and set to work.

By midday, the fresh fish coolers at Vons markets in Garden Grove and Irvine were empty, but the meat coolers were well stocked--though it required some extra effort, according to Craig Whittaker, manager of the Vons in the Woodbridge district of Irvine.

“I got a phone call (about the strike), and I came right down here,” said Whittaker, doing double duty as a meat cutter on Tuesday. “I’ve been here since 2 a.m. That’s why I’m whipped.”

Whittaker said he had to back five delivery trucks up to the market loading docks himself, since drivers refused to cross the picket lines. One truck was still parked on the street. Whittaker was also cutting meat, since there were only three non-union meat cutters on a job that typically requires four.

The strike drew mixed reactions from shoppers.

“So far, it’s not bad,” said Kathy Caporicci of Irvine, commenting on the selection of meat in the cooler. She was doing her every-other-day shopping for her family, which includes three teen-age boys. “Fresh fish, that’s the only thing that’s missing,” she said. “I’m not really worried about this strike. I don’t know why. It just doesn’t seem like an emergency.”

At the Vons in Woodbridge, a decidedly white-collar community, pickets said they had met with no hostility from customers and only a few expressions of support. “Mostly, they look the other way, like they don’t want to look us in the eye,” said Theresa Watson of Santa Ana, one of the striking meat cutters there.

But at the Garden Grove Vons, located in a more working-class community, pickets reported more encouragement from customers.

“One guy asked us what it was all about, and when we told him, he grabbed his wife and left,” said Rick Birinyi, captain of the picket team.

As he spoke, a man strode up and almost shouted at the pickets: “You stick with your union! I was 23 years at Chrysler. By God, you go through hell, but it’s worth it in the end. Stick by the unions! My wife’s in that store, but you don’t see me crossing no picket line!”

The meat cutters’ last strike was in 1982, but it lasted only five hours. Representatives of both sides predicted Tuesday that the current strike will last considerably longer, perhaps extending beyond the five-week industrywide walkout in 1973.

“This could be the biggest strike in the history of the industry,” said Dan Swinton, the meat cutters’ public relations representative.

Voigt of the Food Employers Council said he also thought it would be a long strike.

“Once the strike gets going, the companies get stronger,” he asserted.

No further negotiations are scheduled.

The strike began at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, one hour after the breakdown of last-ditch negotiations.

Tentative Pact

On Tuesday afternoon, Voigt said the markets had reached a tentative agreement early Monday with the United Food and Commercial Workers, who represent the meat cutters.

“We’re mad at the meat cutters,” Voigt said. “They’re the pawns of the Teamsters.”

However, Gerald McTeague, one of the chief negotiators for the meat cutters, denied Voigt’s assertion.

“We thrashed out a lot of issues, but we never agreed on anything,” said McTeague, who is secretary-treasurer of Food and Commercial Workers Local 421 in Los Angeles. “We always told them there was no way we could make an agreement unless the Teamsters got one too.”

Management wants to cut the guaranteed work day of meat cutters from eight to four hours; introduce a new, lower-paid classification of worker called a “meat clerk,” who would perform some of the tasks now done by a meat cutter, and reduce the number of hours a day that stores are required to have a journeyman meat cutter on duty.

The principal unresolved issues with the Teamsters involve management’s demands that it be allowed to impose a lower wage scale for newly hired employees, to subcontract more work and to move into new warehouses without automatically granting the union recognition at the new locations.

Officials of the two unions acknowledged that some of their picket lines went up a bit later than they had hoped. Teamsters continued to work at the main Vons warehouse in El Monte until 11 a.m., when about 400 walked out and began picketing, according to Jerry Vercruse, secretary treasurer of Teamsters Local 630 and the union’s chief negotiator.

In several instances early Tuesday, Teamsters drivers stopped when they encountered meat cutters’ picket lines. Striking meat cutter Jon Giroud at a Vons market in Sepulveda said three trucks had turned away without making deliveries since he started picketing at 12:01 a.m. However, he said, other drivers had laughed and ignored the picket line.

At several Vons stores where Teamsters drivers refused to cross picket lines, management personnel came out, brought the trucks into parking lots and unloaded them.

By Tuesday afternoon, Vercruse said, no Teamsters drivers were operating Vons trucks.

“There isn’t any doubt about the support of our members,” he said. “Everyone understands the job security issues involved in these negotiations.”

Nothing on Hand

Business was brisk at a number of Vons stores, as well as at other markets. Some customers bought unusually large amounts of meat, fearing that supplies might be reduced in the near future. A check at Vons stores in Long Beach’s Bixby Knolls Shopping Center and on National Boulevard in West Los Angeles showed their entire meat departments depleted.

“This is not a good place to shop. There’s no food,” complained shopper Janis Newton in West Los Angeles.

Yet meat counters at Vons stores in Garden Grove and Irvine were well-stocked.

Union meat cutters were at work throughout the day Tuesday at the other market chains, because the stores had not locked them out in the morning as had been expected.

“We’re still working,” said Ruth Buckingham, a union meat cutter behind the butcher’s counter at a Santa Ana Stater Bros. market. “Nobody’s locked out yet. We’re just waiting to hear. Probably tomorrow.”

She said customers at her store have been stocking up on meat. “They’re buying way more than usual. Over the weekend, we were wiped out.”

Mike Bechtol, manager of a Lucky Discount Supermarkets store in Garden Grove, estimated that meat sales were up by 15%. “That’s probably a weekend or extra week’s worth. People don’t go crazy like they used to.”

Times staff writers Barbara Baird, Leonard Greenwood, Denise Hamilton and Roberto Rodriguez in Los Angeles County, Steve Emmons and Kim Murphy in Orange County and H. G. Reza in San Diego contributed to this story.