‘A Lot of Anger and Frustration’ : Tension Climbs as Pickets Man a Busy Battlefront

One union man has the incident on videotape and offers this slow-motion replay:

A car surges through the picket line at the Ralphs Warehouse and Bakery and winds up with a Teamster splayed on its hood. As the car comes to a stop, the striker rolls off the hood and onto his feet, cocks his arm and drives his fist through the closed window on the driver’s side, shattering the glass and breaking his hand. The driver of the car is unhurt.

Neither party was cited by the police. “The driver was wrong to run the picket line; the striker was wrong to hit the car,” said one Los Angeles police officer trying to maintain peace at the picket line. “It was a judgment call.”

There have been plenty of judgment calls at the warehouse, on San Fernando Road near the Glendale border. Teamsters Local 848 is making its stand here against the supervisors and substitute workers crossing the 24-hour-a-day picket line into the warehouse.

Even with Los Angeles police monitoring the activity, the warehouse has been a busy battlefront in the 17-day-old market strike-lockout that has been marked by scares about food poisoning and bombings and by a persistent measure of vandalism and violence.

Chicken Soup and Encouragement

On one side of the front is the Teamsters’ bivouac--a portable toilet, a fire in a rusty 55-gallon drum and Dick Brass’ old camper. Brass, a 69-year-old retired trucker, and his wife, Lillie, provide the strikers with chili, chicken soup, hot coffee and encouragement. The strikers say they are angry and frustrated by management’s attempts to cut their benefits and by the temporary workers who have taken their jobs.

On the other side are Ralphs management and security personnel and temporary workers taunted as “scabs.” They blame the strikers for violence, vandalism and threats.

Here is the kind of tension that puts fists through car windows. Pickets taunt and curse the substitute truckers, accusing them of stealing their jobs. And they laugh and taunt when the driver cuts a corner too sharply, pulling the trailer into the fence. Sometimes the temporary workers reply by waving paychecks at the pickets.

Police say strikers have been known to yank the “the granny handle” that connects trailer to tractor, causing the tractor to drive off without its load.

More often, the violence and vandalism have occurred on the road. Trucks have been towed to the warehouse with radiators and tires shot out. Several trucks have been damaged by gunfire, police say, and one substitute driver for Alpha Beta was wounded by a bullet in Orange County on Nov. 7. A Ralphs driver was treated for burns Saturday after a large firecracker landed in his lap and exploded.

A few nights ago, a car carrying four substitute workers leaving the Ralphs warehouse was rammed from behind by a pickup truck, spun around and rammed twice more. One person was slightly injured, and Ralphs has offered a $10,000 reward for the arrest of the driver of the pickup.

Meanwhile, Los Angeles police said they have confiscated handguns about five times from substitute drivers at the Ralphs site.

“We’ve had a lot of damage,” said Jan Charles Gray, vice president for Ralphs. “In fact, this is probably the most violent strike in the history of the supermarket business in Southern California.”

Ralphs recently hired extra security guards--some with permits to carry guns--to follow the trucks. The extra security has deterred violence considerably, Gray said.

Ralphs security guards refused to allow a Times reporter to enter the warehouse to talk with temporary workers and others who have crossed the picket line.

Inside the Teamsters’ encampment, several strikers, without admitting anything, suggested that such activity is a routine element of a labor strife. A few said they do not want to hurt people but would be happy to damage the trucks. “That way you’re hurting the company,” one said.

“There’s a lot of anger and frustration,” said Frank Fernandes, one of the strikers. “Guys are getting their frustration out. For some, violence is a way to go. . . . If I had four kids and I couldn’t feed them, I might go off the deep end too.”

As for the bomb threats and threats of food poisoning at Alpha Beta, Fernandes and others said it sounds like the work of a kook--or perhaps a trick by management, trying to turn public sentiment against the strikers.

“They want people to think we’re the bad guys,” he said. “We’re not the bad guys. They’re the bad guys.”

A union man for 52 years, Brass figures he has seen a lot. He agreed that nobody wanted to hurt anyone. As for management, “this is the hardest line I’ve ever seen. They’re determined to break the union. And if they do that, everybody suffers.”

He shrugged and smiled when he was asked about the Teamsters rough-and-tumble reputation.

“It is rough and tumble. You work hard, you play hard,” he said. His wife suggested that a few flat tires are not such a bad thing.

“They’re good-hearted people,” Brass said of the strikers. “Every one of ‘em.”