Some Clerks Opt to Join Picket Line

Until he walked off the job at 2:30 p.m. Thursday, Mike Ruzek said that he was barely getting by on his $4.50-an-hour job as a clerk’s helper at a Vons supermarket in Fountain Valley.

But Ruzek said he wasn’t concerned about his personal finances when he followed his friend, Erica Johnson, a receiving clerk at the store at 17950 Magnolia St., and joined the picket line of butchers, Teamsters and other retail clerks.

“I don’t have a choice now. I can always get another job. But I have to stick with my friends,” said Ruzek, who only two hours before had said that he sympathized with the strikers but couldn’t afford to join them on the picket line.

Four clerks ignored what they said were warnings from store manager Paula Gamble that they would be fired if they struck. Gamble later said she told the four clerks that “they might” lose their jobs if they joined the 100 strikers outside the store.

Johnson walked out of the store in tears. She was later comforted by union officials and clerks from other Vons stores.

“She told me I would be fired,” she sobbed in the parking lot, referring to store manager Gamble.

But after being told by strikers that Vons could not fire her, Johnson walked back to the store and met Gamble at the door, informing the store manager that she would honor the picket line.

The striking clerks said their contract allows them to walk off the job in support of other Vons employees. Vons management would not comment on the contract.

Craig Sahli of Newport Beach was the first clerk to join the strikers, just 15 minutes after the picket line formed. Sahli, a part-time clerk, was cheered by the placard-carrying pickets at 2:05 p.m. when he left the store and removed his tie and name tag.

“We have to stand together,” he said. “They are asking too much from these guys. (Gamble) told me I would be fired.”

Diane Barber of Orange arrived at the store at 2:35 p.m., just in time to turn in her keys. A nine-year Vons employee who transferred to the Fountain Valley store only last week, Barber refused to speak to a company official who asked whether she wanted to talk before she walked off the job.

“No, I know what I’m doing,” Barber told Phil Hawkins, a Vons district manager.

Hawkins refused to answer when asked whether clerks had been threatened with termination if they honored the picket line.

Jerry Henderson, a representative of Retail Clerks Union Local 234, said the 16,000 members of the union were authorized to walk out at 3 p.m. today in support of the strike by the meat cutters and the Teamsters.

A spokesman for the local said late Thursday that about one-third of the retail clerks had already walked out.

Sharon Allen and Connie Gibboney, both Vons clerks in El Toro, also turned out to help the butchers and Teamsters persuade clerks at the Fountain Valley store to walk off the job.

“I believe that they are striking for all of us. I like Vons, but we have to stick together,” Gibboney said.

Allen said the retail clerks will have to negotiate their own contract in two years and they will need the support of the butchers and Teamsters.

“We have to put it on the line now,” Allen said. “If we don’t strike now, then in two years, when we have to negotiate, we’ll wake up with our throats slit. Vons is a good company and we are proud to put on their uniform. But this is America; it’s our right to strike if we want.”

Allen, who has worked for Vons for four years, also said that the company had posted a notice at her store that clerks “would be subject to termination” if they walked off the job.

“People are really afraid of losing their jobs,” she added.

Ruzek, who recently returned to work after a shoulder injury, said he would be hurt by his decision to join the strike. While he was unemployed with his injury, his car was stolen, he said. He had to buy another one and was barely getting by on his salary.

“It’s a bad time for me,” he said.

But fellow clerk Allen was not surprised at the sacrifice Ruzek was making on behalf of the butchers and Teamsters.

“The people who have been through the hardest times are the ones who sacrifice the most (during a strike),” Allen said admiringly of the young clerk’s helper.

Mick Moreland of Anaheim, a butcher at a Lucky’s store in Huntington Beach, said the support by the retail clerks could help end the strike quickly.

“If we close this store, then we’ll go close another. What I hope is that we will be working by Monday,” Moreland said.

The meat cutters and Teamsters petitioning the clerks to join the strike assured all those who walked out Thursday that when the strike ends, everyone would return to work together.

“Stick with us and we’ll stick with you,” the pickets chanted.

“We won’t go back to work until you go back to work,” Moreland told Johnson while she stood at the door telling Gamble that she would join the strikers.

However, Gamble said that she was more concerned with violence breaking out during the demonstration than she was with employees joining the strike.

Earlier this week, a trailer rig delivering supplies was turned over behind the store, and at dawn Thursday, an empty trailer parked by the delivery entrance was set on fire. Gamble said she was told by “friends” that trouble could erupt at the store. She refused to drive her car to work Thursday.

The clerks who walked out Thursday said business at the store had declined since the strike began. Gamble refused to allow a photographer to take pictures of a mostly empty meat shelf, although she insisted that the shelf would be filled once she had time to cut the meat herself.

Dan Carpenter, the store’s assistant manager, called police shortly before the pickets began to ask the clerks to walk out at 1:45 p.m. He said the clerks had been threatened by the strikers, who denied the accusation.

But when a police officer arrived, no employee inside the store would file a complaint and the officer left. No incidents followed, except the cheers erupting every time a clerk joined the picket line.