Talks to Resume in Supermarket Strike

Negotiations aimed at ending the 8-day-old Southern California supermarket strike will resume today at the Anaheim Hilton Hotel.

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

In another development Tuesday, two Albertson’s employees told Anaheim police they discovered a bullet hole in the back of their private car Monday night after hearing a gunshot as they got off the Orange Freeway. Neither was injured.

Incident on Off-Ramp

Ron Antlock, 27, of Whittier, a supervisor, and Ernest Englemann, 43, of Norwalk, a temporary driver, said they were driving from a warehouse in Brea to a store in Anaheim when the incident occurred about 10:30 p.m. at the Ball Road off-ramp, Anaheim Police Sgt. Edmond Pierson said.

Meanwhile, at about the same time Monday night, a fire broke out in a storage trailer parked behind a Safeway store in La Habra.

A Fire Department spokesman said the blaze, which caused an estimated $5,000 damage, was apparently started by someone who ignited gasoline that had been poured on the trailer’s tire. The flames were confined to the trailer and did not damage the store, authorities said.

On Tuesday night, bomb threats were reported at two Vons stores in Garden Grove. The first threat was reported to police about 7:30 p.m., and a package was found at the store, which had been evacuated, said Garden Grove Police Lt. Larry Hodges. The Orange County Sheriff’s Department’s bomb squad determined the package was not a bomb, he said.

The other bomb threat was reported to police at 8 p.m., but no explosives were found, he said.

In addition to the Teamsters, 10,000 meat cutters and meat wrappers are on strike. They are represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which will have representatives at the Anaheim Hilton Hotel to monitor today’s talks. If substantial progress is made in bargaining with the Teamsters, then negotiations could resume with the United 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 become 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 hotel Saturday.

Vercruse said Tuesday that 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 that 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 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.

Staff writers Gary Jarlson and Marcida Dodson contributed to this report from Orange County.