Stalled Talks Will Resume Today in Supermarket Strike

Negotiations aimed at ending the eight-day-old Southern California supermarket strike will resume today at the Anaheim Hilton Hotel.

Representatives of the Food Employers Council, who negotiate for the major supermarket chains, and the Teamsters Union, who bargain for 12,000 drivers, office employees and warehouse personnel, were scheduled to begin talks at 10 a.m.

Also on strike are 10,000 meat cutters and meat wrappers, who are represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers. Negotiators for the Food and Commercial Workers will also be at the hotel to monitor the talks. If substantial progress is made in bargaining with the Teamsters, then negotiations could resume with the Food and Commercial Workers.

“Any time they agree to talk, I’m encouraged that we can find some resolution,” said Frank Allen of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, who has been supervising the negotiations.

The talks broke off Saturday night when Joe McLaughlin, president of the Food Employers Council, said he had tired of waiting for the Teamsters to make a written response to a new proposal on a thorny issue that has been the sole subject of the last several bargaining sessions. That issue is management’s demand that it be allowed to subcontract some work now done by union members.

Jerry Vercruse, chief negotiator for the Teamsters, said the union was mulling over its response when management decided to leave the Anaheim Hilton on Saturday.

Vercruse said Tuesday the union would ask management to clarify some of the language in its proposal. He said this was necessary to give the union a clearer picture of how many jobs might be threatened by the changes management is seeking.

The strike began when Teamsters and meat cutters walked off the job at 164 Southern California Vons stores and the company’s warehouses on Nov. 5. Subsequently, six other chains--Albertson’s, Alpha Beta, Hughes, Lucky, Ralphs and Safeway--locked out employees who are members of the striking unions, broadening the labor dispute to nearly 1,000 markets.

In another development Tuesday, authorities in two Orange County cities said they are looking into a shooting and a possible arson incident that may be strike-related. Anaheim police said they were looking into shots being fired at a supervisor and temporary driver for Albertson’s as they drove a private car late Monday night on the Orange Freeway. Neither was injured.

About the same time, an arsonist set fire to a storage trailer parked behind a Safeway store in La Habra. A Fire Department spokesman said the blaze caused an estimated $5,000 damage.