Manicurist Confronts Trucker : Strikers Get Surprise Supporter

He had successfully steered through striking pickets at a downtown warehouse and again outside the Vons supermarket in Canoga Park.

But the grocery-truck driver hadn’t counted on 64-year-old manicurist Grace Chiapperini when he parked his big rig behind the store at 20151 Roscoe Blvd. Thursday afternoon.

Chiapperini was quietly painting a customer’s fingernails in a nearby beauty shop when she spied the truck crossing the picket line. Throwing down her cuticle clippers and emery board, she raced out to the market’s rear loading dock.

Then, standing on her tiptoes, the 5-foot-tall Chiapperini berated the truck driver.

“You scab! You’re taking away people’s jobs,” she bellowed, pounding on the side of the truck to prevent him from getting out of the cab to unload his wares.

Turning toward onlookers, Chiapperini screamed that she would stand in front of Vons trucks driven by strike-breakers. “The truckers and the meat cutters just want to keep what they have,” she yelled.

Photographer Pummeled

She also vented her rage by harmlessly pummeling a news photographer trying to record the ruckus.

Southern California’s first major supermarket strike since 1978 began Monday after contract talks between the supermarkets and two unions broke down. The unions, the meat cutters’ United Food and Commercial Workers and the Teamsters, struck the Vons chain first. In response, most other major chains locked out their employees who belong to those unions.

The half-dozen sign-toting pickets standing about 100 feet away at the loading ramp entrance watched Chiapperini’s unsolicited testimonial in stunned silence. Then they cheered.

“We were very surprised by what she did,” said Barry Rado, 35, the store’s striking meat manager. “Deep down inside, I know most of my regular customers aren’t going to shop someplace else because they see me out picketing. So this kind of thing really gets us pumped up.”

Chiapperini returned to the Charmette Beauty Shop to finish the manicure, leaving the driver to finish his work and depart. When she was through, she stepped outside again to explain her anger.

Work in Sweatshop

“I worked in a garment sweatshop in the 1940s,” said Chiapperini, of Canoga Park. “They didn’t have a union then. I know what it’s like to work in a place where you don’t have any protection.”

She said she was pushed into taking her stand when a customer walked into the beauty shop Thursday and commented that the market employees “ought to be shot” for striking.

“I got mad. I told her she didn’t know what was going on, that the butchers and truck drivers were only trying to protect their benefits and aren’t after more pay. I told her I shop at Vons and know the people who work over there. These people don’t shirk their jobs.

“After I talked to her, she understood,” Chiapperini said proudly.

Mary Bartnicki, owner of the beauty shop, said she agrees with the strikers--and with Chiapperini’s outspoken support of the strike.

“It’s a disgrace--we’re going back to the days of the sweatshop,” Bartnicki, 54, also of Canoga Park, said. “I spend $200 a week at Vons. But I’m not going to spend a nickel there during this strike. Not even a lottery ticket.”

Bartnicki said she looked into the Vons market earlier in the day “to tell any of my customers that I saw not to shop there,” and was horrified to spot her mother inside.

“She’s 79. She was there to buy a little bag of carrots. I said, ‘That’s it; let’s get out of here.’ She left her carrots there. My husband went over to a Boys market to get her some,” Bartnicki said. The Boys Markets on Tuesday signed an interim agreement with the unions.

That story drew another grin from Rado, who acknowledged that he could not dissuade shoppers that way.

“I joke with the customers I know when they cross the picket line,” he said. “But I would not confront them. I’ll be going back in to work after this is over and I’ll be serving them again.”