Teamsters’, Meat Cutters’ Backers Try New Tactics as Talks Resume

Striking Teamsters and meat cutters returned to the bargaining table Thursday afternoon in hopes of ending their 3-day-old strike against more than 1,000 Southern California supermarkets.

Meanwhile, strike supporters unveiled new tactics--taking a busload of union officials to several Vons stores in Los Angeles and Orange counties, where they persuaded retail clerks to walk off the job. Store managers and some consumers were angered by the strategy.

In San Diego County, most Vons stores filled the gap caused by striking workers by hiring temporary help. However, some stores reduced hours and had some decrease in food and meat supplies.

Federal mediator Frank Allen summoned the two sides back to negotiations at the Breakers Hotel in Long Beach. Both labor and management said they were entering the talks with an open mind, but neither side was particularly optimistic about an early resolution.

“I don’t think we’re going to get any fast settlement,” said Jerry Vercruse, chief negotiator for the 12,000 striking Teamsters. “We’ve got so many major items still to negotiate--maybe 75 items--and several are blockbusters.”

Similar sentiments were expressed by David Willauer, a spokesman for the Food Employers Council, which represents the supermarket chains in the negotiations. “It would surprise me if much was accomplished,” he said. But he said he hoped the strike would end before it “escalates into an all-out war.”

The strike began at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, one hour after talks between the Food Employers Council and the Teamsters broke down. Vercruse said the Teamsters had offered to submit the union’s final offer to binding arbitration. Willauer said management declined the offer because “it’s hardly appropriate (to arbitrate) a whole lot of complex issues.”

The unions chose Vons as their initial strike target. In response, six other chains--Albertson’s, Alpha Beta, Hughes, Food Basket, Ralphs and Safeway--locked out employees belonging to the striking unions. Stater Bros., a Colton-based chain with 94 stores, has not locked out any workers yet, and company president Jack Brown declined to say why. He denied reports that his company was about to sign an interim agreement with the unions.

On Thursday, Foods Co., a Commerce-based chain of nine stores, signed an interim contract with the unions. This means the chain has agreed to abide by whatever settlement the two sides reach. Earlier, Boys, Gelsons, Mayfair and Big Bear signed interim pacts, called “me too” agreements.

Picketing activities were calmer Thursday in most locations than they were the day before, although the total number of arrests rose to 25 in Orange County and more than a dozen in Los Angeles. One person was arrested for throwing objects at a vehicle at the Lucky warehouse in Irvine on Thursday morning, and on Thursday afternoon a small explosive device was thrown at a Vons truck pulling up to a loading dock at one of the company’s stores in Palmdale, according to police there. No one was injured.

There were no arrests in San Diego County.

Five people have been injured in skirmishes precipitated by the lockout of union workers at supermarket warehouses in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

Rock-throwing incidents prompted management lawyers to file court actions Thursday. Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Irving A. Shimer issued a temporary restraining order limiting pickets to five per entrance at warehouses and requiring the pickets to stay at least five feet apart and keep moving. Additional pickets must remain at least 30 feet away from the entrances. “I want to promote free speech and keep bodies and cars separate,” Shimer said. “I don’t want anybody harassed or hurt. . . . I will not tolerate violence, guns or baseball bats.” The court order does not apply to retail store picketing.

Unions also were active on the legal front. Late Wednesday, officials of retail clerks’ locals in Rialto and Santa Barbara, represented by the United Food & Commercial Workers union, filed separate complaints against Vons, saying Vons had threatened their members with demotion and salary cuts if they honor the picket lines of the striking meat cutters. Dan Swinton, a spokesman for the Food & Commercial Workers, who also represent the meat cutters, alleged that this conduct violated federal labor laws.

Swinton asserted that close to half of the clerks at the 164 Vons stores in Southern California had left their jobs in support of the strike. A spokesman for retail clerks Local 234 in Orange County estimated that one-third of the local’s 16,000 members had walked off the job to honor picket lines. Management sources continued to maintain that these figures were highly exaggerated.

Dan Granger, a Vons spokesman, said that 95% of the chain’s clerks are working. He said that there had been “isolated cases” of large-scale walkouts. He said 75% of the clerks in a Lancaster store walked out Wednesday but said operations were back to normal Thursday. He said that several Ralphs checkers had volunteered to work at a Vons store in Simi Valley and added that some Alpha Beta checkers are working at some other Vons locales.

He said all the clerks who walked out “will not be allowed back in and will be replaced.”

Granger said Vons would make “normal” meat deliveries Thursday, “but the variety won’t be there.” He asserted that warehouses are operating at 50% to 100% and added that the chain was experiencing problems getting products to stores after loading. Granger said he expects those problems to be cleared up by the end of next week.

At midday Thursday, strike supporters unveiled their novel tactics in the San Gabriel Valley and Orange County. At 11:30 a.m. about 25 members of Food & Commercial Workers Local 770, the large retail clerks’ local in Los Angeles, arrived by bus at a Vons store on 1421 E. Valley Blvd. in Alhambra and unveiled a new tactic. Dressed in suits, they entered the store and began urging retail clerks to walk off the job in support of the strikers.

Groups of four or five union members would surround an employee and urge the person to leave. They clapped their hands as they approached employees. One had a camera and photographed employees who were slow to depart.

Each time and employee walked out, the union members cheered. Meanwhile, right outside the store, members of striking meat cutters’ and Teamsters’ locals shouted into an open door, “They can’t fire you. Come out here with your friends.” They also chanted, “Union, union,” and “walk out, walk out.”

“We want to let as many people as we can know what their rights are,” said Andrea Zinder, the research director of Local 770. “We’re telling them that they can’t be fired. Vons has posted notices saying that if you walk off the job, you can’t come back until the strike is settled. That isn’t true. We’re just telling them what this foreshadows for their future. If it can happen (a bad contract) to the meat cutters and the Teamsters, it can happen to the clerks too.” The clerks’ contract expires in 1987.

After about an hour, about 20 clerks and food baggers had walked off the job.

Jerry Stotko, Vons district manager, said he had never seen anything like Thursday’s action in his 25 years with the company. “This is pure harassment.”

One customer in the checkout line got into a shouting match with the outside pickets and made an obscene gesture toward them.

Later in the day, the unions repeated the tactic at a Vons in Pasadena and about half the store’s 40 clerks walked out.

Different locals used the tactic in Fountain Valley Thursday afternoon. Clerk Sharon Allen said she had been threatened with firing as she walked out. “I believe we have to put it on the line now,” she 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 when we put on the uniform. But it’s our right to strike if we want.”

Management said it needs contract concessions from the unions to remain competitive with nonunion and unionized discount stores whose contracts have lower wage rates than those of the major chains. Willauer said a number of the work rules are too restrictive and severely hamper management’s ability to operate. Both the Teamsters and representatives of the 10,000 striking meat cutters say that the changes management is demanding would severely erode job security and other protections.

“I don’t think management’s demands have anything to do with competition,” Vercruse said. “The management is simply trying to take advantage of what it considers the anti-labor climate in the country today.”

Times staff writers Sam Enriquez, Deborah Hastings, Thomas Omestad, Nieson Himmel, Nancy Skelton and Dorothy Townsend in Los Angeles County, Ray Perez in Orange County and Sebastian Dortch in San Diego County assisted in the preparation of this story.