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, however, both sides predicted that the dispute will expand today and will be a long strike.

Pickets went up 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 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.

More Chains

Voigt said he expected that picketing would start today at Albertsons, 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.

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 cutter’s public relations representative.

Voigt of the council also said he thought it would be a long strike.

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

No further negotiations are currently 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 they are required to have a journeyman meat cutter on duty.

The principal unresolved issues with the Teamsters involve management’s demand that it be allowed to impose a lower wage scale for newly hired employees and be allowed to subcontract more work and 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, when Teamsters drivers refused to cross picket lines, management personnel came out, brought the trucks into parking lots and unloaded them.

By Tuesday afternoon, however, 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, found that the entire meat department was depleted.

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

On the other hand, meat coolers at Vons stores in Garden Grove and Irvine were well stocked. Craig Whittaker, manager of the Vons in Irvine’s Woodbridge District said he came to the store at 2 a.m. to help three recently hired nonunion butchers cut meat. Whittaker said he also backed five delivery trucks to the market loading docks himself when the drivers refused to cross picket lines.

Whittaker said all of his retail clerks crossed the picket line and appeared for work.

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.

Both the strikers and management are anxious to have the store clerks on their side. Vons management sent letters to its clerks in recent weeks, stressing that they could not be penalized by their union if they came to work, because they are operating under a contract that will not expire until 1987. The letters also informed the clerks that although they could not be fired if they honored the picket lines, they could be replaced by newly hired workers, according to the clerks and Vons officials.

Needed the Money

Several clerks at the Vons store on Western Avenue near Beverly Boulevard in Los Angeles told a reporter that they had chosen to work, because they needed the money.

Retail clerks supported the strike in some instances, according to union officials. Nearly all the clerks at one Vons market in Camarillo and another in Westlake Village walked off the job, said Art Takei of Food and Commercial Workers Local 770 in Los Angeles, one of the largest retail clerks’ locals.

Takei said he thought support from the clerks would increase when more picket lines are up. The union has been offering its members financial incentives, ranging from $100 a week to full salary if they honor the meat cutters’ lines.

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