Mediator Says Food Strike Could Last 2 More Weeks

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.

But for shoppers, the strike was having little effect, especially in Orange County. Many shoppers were out Friday and 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.

“I was impressed,” Hodgson said. “I found much more than I had expected to find.”

At a Lucky market on Harbor Boulevard in Costa Mesa, store manager Frank Madden said business was normal despite the store’s major remodeling.

“We’re on top of it,” Madden said. “We continued with the remodeling in spite of the strike. And we’re getting everything we want, except for a bit of meat.”

Madden also has a staunch supporter. Janice Iglesias of Costa Mesa said she has shopped at that store for five years and would continue to support it no matter how the strike went.

“I may not find a few brands, but I have everything else,” she said. “Besides, I’d come here even if they were picketing the store. I don’t personally care for unions.”

Meanwhile, in La Habra Friday, police arrested an independent driver who allegedly had brandished a loaded gun during a skirmish with pickets near the loading dock of the Safeway store at 1220 W. Imperial Highway.

Fred Montalbano, 37, of Bellflower was making a delivery at 4:50 p.m. when he got into a “verbal skirmish” at the store with striking workers, who claimed he displayed a gun, said Sgt. Phil Stufflebean. Officers dispersed the strikers, who had surrounded the truck, and then found a semiautomatic pistol in the truck cab, Stufflebean said. Police booked Montalbano on suspicion of possessing a loaded firearm, and the truck driver was released after posting a $5,000 bond.

The negotiations between the striking unions and management have yielded no solutions yet.

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

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

In fact, the Teamsters held a news conference Friday to criticize 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,” said David Willauer of the Food Employers Council.

Strikers were making plans to throw up isolated picket lines around stores of additional food chains as the strike entered its 12th day, Vercruse said. 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 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.

There were isolated complaints from shoppers in San Diego and Long Beach.

Garry D. Rudman, 34, of Chula Vista said that 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.”

Crossing Picket Lines

Some shoppers said they 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,” striking Teamster driver Tommie Maples 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.

Store Nearly Empty

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’ workweek and create a new classification of employees--a meat clerk--that would be paid about half of the approximately $13 an hour that journeymen butchers now make. The Teamsters are fighting attempts by the markets to hire non-union truck drivers.

“This is just the beginning of a series of actions in support of the strike,” said David Arian, coalition spokesman and president of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union Local 13. “This strike is not just for the Teamsters and the meat cutters. This is a strike where major corporations are attempting to drive the standards and conditions of the American worker down. . . . Somewhere the line has got to be drawn.”

Battery Report Filed

There were no arrests, but one battery report was filed by a Vons truck driver, Michael Bonfiglio, who alleged that a picketer hit him with a sign.

A spokesman for Vons complained that Los Angeles police officers were not keeping order at the San Pedro store and some other picketing locations, despite a court order limiting the number of pickets to five at each store entrance.

Deputy City Atty. Maureen Siegel said in a court appearance Thursday that the city “does not want to be seen as ‘an arm of management’ ” in enforcing limits on the number of pickets. “We (the city) are trying to maintain a neutral position in this labor dispute,” she said.

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 and Donna St. George.