Mediator Expects No Early End to Strike : Shoppers Have Few Complaints as Market Walkout Enters Its 12th Day

The Southern California supermarket strike enters its second weekend today with a federal mediator predicting that the bitter conflict could last as long as two more weeks.

Despite some shortages, however, shoppers have been able to fill their carts with almost everything they want.

“It’s hung up on the hard issues,” mediator Frank Allen said Friday, after a week of breakdowns in talks between management and 10,000 meat cutters and 12,000 Teamsters involved in the dispute.

“I think it’s going to be a while--at least a week or two” before the strike is settled, Allen said. “But that doesn’t mean I’m going to stop trying. I’ll be talking to the parties by telephone, exploring other possibilities.”

Prediction Not Challenged

Jerry Vercruse, chief negotiator for the Teamsters, said he “wouldn’t quarrel with” Allen’s prediction.

The Teamsters held a news conference Friday to blast management for being “insensitive” to employees and for “thinking they can stonewall” negotiations until the unions capitulate.

As for management, “the strike will last as long as the Teamsters refuse to talk productively and meaningfully,” offered David Willauer of the Food Employers Council.

Meanwhile, strikers were making plans to throw up isolated picket lines around stores of additional food chains, Vercruse said, as the strike entered its 12th day. Pickets already are marching in front of Vons and Safeway outlets from the Mexican border to Bakersfield.

Other chains involved in the strike and lockout are Albertson’s, Alpha Beta, Hughes, Lucky and Ralphs.

As participants in the conflict hurled verbal brickbats and made gloomy predictions, shoppers in widespread areas of the Southland said they were experiencing only minor inconveniences. Many reported well-stocked shelves and a business-as-usual atmosphere despite some low supplies of fresh fish, dairy products and canned goods.

Most of the chains--including Vons, where picketers have been most numerous--said their stocks were in good shape.

A survey by Times reporters found that most stores were doing brisk business Friday and that shoppers were finding most of what they needed.

Alexa Hodgson of Costa Mesa, who bought $85 worth of groceries at a Lucky store in Santa Ana Friday afternoon, said she had found about 90% of the items on her weekly shopping list. All that was missing, she said, were alfalfa sprouts and fresh fish.

William Thomson of San Gabriel could not imagine what all the fuss was. Thomson--his basket overflowing from his regular Friday foray to Safeway--announced: “I got everything I need.”

Still, there were isolated complaints from shoppers about shortages of various items at some stores.

Garry D. Rudman, 34, of Chula Vista said shopping at Vons during the strike “ain’t worth a damn. Since they started, this store has been out of everything.”

Outside Vons in Long Beach, shopper Jan Buxton said the store was out of several items, including orange juice. “I’m finding things are missing; shelves are getting low,” she said. “I’ll be glad when it’s over.”

Elizabeth Urkudea, 41, of Rolling Hills Estates said she could not find lobster in her Vons and was disappointed.

Employee shortages slowed operations at some stores, including a Safeway in Burbank where all but about six employees honored the strikers’ picket line Thursday and Friday, according to Jim Wise, a produce manager sent to Burbank from a Los Angeles Safeway. He said replacements were brought in from as far away as Lancaster.

On Friday afternoon, customers waited in long lines for three clerks to check out groceries.

Crossing Picket Lines

Some shoppers had mixed feelings about crossing picket lines but did so anyway for convenience.

At a Vons market in La Mirada, Rhonda James said she did not cross the picket lines in the first days of the strike, shopping instead at a small independent market near her south Whittier home.

“But for big grocery trips, that’s a real pain,” James said. “There’s not the selection at the corner market. Listen, I sympathize with the meat cutters, but I’ve got a family of five to cook for and feed. So I decided to come back to Vons.”

As shoppers passed by to get their groceries, one disgruntled picketer at Vons in Long Beach expressed frustration about the lack of progress in the labor talks.

“We’re out walking the cement, and they’re at the table not accomplishing anything,” said striking Teamster driver Tommie Maples.

One area where the strike was having some effect was in the flow of food to thousands of needy Los Angeles County families that depend on food banks, agencies that normally get much of their supplies from supermarkets with surpluses and damaged goods.

Several food banks said they were experiencing some shortages but still had food. The Long Beach Food Bank--which distributes a wide variety of canned goods, cheese and butter through 180 social service organizations--has an all-but-empty warehouse because of the strike, official Jim Graham said.

Meantime, a demonstration in support of striking supermarket workers was held by 300 members of Harbor area unions in San Pedro Friday morning at Vons on Western Avenue.

The boisterous demonstration, which left the Vons store nearly empty and several shoppers admittedly intimidated, was arranged by the Los Angeles-Long Beach Harbor Labor Coalition, a group representing 18 harbor area unions.

The main issue for the striking unions is job security. The stores want to reduce the meat cutters’ work week and create a new employee classification--meat clerk--that would be paid about half the roughly $13 an hour that journeyman butchers now make. The Teamsters are fighting attempts by the markets to subcontract some work to lower-paying non-union firms.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Kevin L. Carter, Steven R. Churm, Ralph Cipriano, Sebastian Dortch, Denise Hamilton, Alan Maltun, William B. Nottingham, Ray Perez and Donna St. George.