Both Sides Fear Store Strike Will Last Into ’86

The Southern California supermarket labor dispute has become so badly stalemated that it may not be resolved until early next year, a spokesman for the targeted market chains and wholesalers predicted Monday.

A spokesman for one of the two striking unions, United Food & Commercial Workers, which represents 10,000 striking meat cutters, also acknowledged that no speedy resolution of the 22-day-old strike and lockout is in sight.

Meanwhile, in the newest round of violence that has plagued the strike, three strikers were in custody Monday for their alleged involvement in two incidents. In one case, two members of the Teamsters Union were arrested after they allegedly rammed a carload of Ralphs market warehousemen in Los Angeles en route to work. In the other, police arrested a meat cutters union member on suspicion of threatening to poison meat at a Lucky market in Norwalk.

No new talks were scheduled after a breakdown in both sets of negotiations over the weekend, a development that federal mediator Frank Allen said was disappointing but perhaps inevitable.

‘Pushing Too Hard’

“I think we may have been pushing too hard,” Allen said. “Now we need to let both sides sit back and reflect.”

A fourth day of talks in a week between representatives of 12,000 striking Teamsters and the Food Employers Council broke down Saturday morning. Then, on Saturday night, council negotiators held three hours of unsuccessful talks with representatives of the meat cutters.

On Monday the Food Employers Council and the meat cutters union traded charges of bad-faith bargaining.

Management claimed the union had on Saturday turned down the same contract its representatives had verbally accepted on Nov. 4, the evening before the strike began.

In response, the union admitted that it had agreed in general terms to a labor contract on Nov. 4 but insisted that the contract it rejected Saturday had numerous provisions that were not contained in the original tentative agreement.

Dan Swinton, a spokesmen for the meat cutters, said union strategists were meeting Monday on the possible expansion of the strike to other parts of the state.

Both unions are on strike against Vons and are locked out at six other chains--Albertson’s, Alpha Beta, Hughes, Lucky, Ralphs and Safeway. So far, the unions’ strategy has been to place most of their pickets at Vons, where chain officials estimate business is off 5% to 10% from this time last year, in a divide-and-conquer maneuver. Selected Safeway stores also are being picketed.

Resolution of the strike has been stalled primarily because the dispute focuses on critical work rules, not money.

The supermarkets, insisting they need lower labor costs to offer prices competitive with discount stores, want to pay future employees substantially less money than current workers. They also want Teamster approval to use non-union labor when chains move into new warehouses. And, in dealing with the meat cutters union, they want to cut in half the number of hours a market is required to have a journeyman meat cutter on duty.

The president of one company that is being struck said Monday that a prolonged strike appears inevitable because “people seem to be setting their feet in cement.”

The official, who spoke on the condition his name not be used, said, “At this point, things like this seem to take on a life of their own, regardless of the consequences they have at the distribution or retail levels.”

David Willauer, spokesman for the Food Employers Council, declined Monday to discuss why negotiations with Teamsters--which had appeared promising earlier last week--broke down. Negotiators “stumbled” on stickier issues and “probably stayed in that meeting a little longer than we should (have),” he said.

Willauer released a 25-page contract that he said was offered to the meat cutters on Saturday night. The contract includes no hourly pay increase but offers lump-sum bonuses of $500 in 1986 and $1,000 in 1987.

It also offers “resignation incentives” to veteran employees. In addition to loosening union rules on journeymen, it calls for meat wrappers hired in the future to be paid $7.90 an hour and be guaranteed no more than four hours work a day. By contrast, currently employed wrappers would be paid $12.16 an hour and be guaranteed an eight-hour day.

Willauer said meat cutter negotiators had shaken hands on the same contract the night before the strike began. “In this business, you do not shake hands until a deal is finished,” he said.

But meat cutter spokesman Swinton said the contract presented Saturday “had about a score of items that had never been discussed by either side,” such as a plan to limit employee medical costs.

Willauer said the contract offer “is not a take-it-or-leave-it proposal,” and said management would return to the bargaining table if Frank Allen, a federal mediator who has been sitting in on the negotiations, asks both sides to return.

Swinton said, “The ball is in management’s court after what happened Saturday.”

Police gave these descriptions of the newest incidents of strike-related violence:

- In Sunland, police on Sunday booked Fred O’Connell, 28, and Leland Lescher, 23, for assault with a deadly weapon. Police said the two men rammed a car carrying four non-union Ralphs employees on Nov. 8 in Los Angeles. The suspects, using a pickup truck that police said was stolen, allegedly rammed the workers’ car three times, causing it to spin out. No one was injured. Bail for both suspects was set at $9,500 each. Lescher was free on bail late Wednesday, while O’Connell was still in custody.

- In Los Alamitos, meat cutter union member Joie Nowka, 45, was arrested at his home Monday morning by sheriff’s deputies. A sheriff’s spokesman said that last Wednesday, a witness at a Lucky store on Firestone Boulevard in Norwalk overheard Nowka say he was going to “stab the meat with poison.” He was booked at Lakewood Sheriff Station on a misdemeanor charge of making a false threat to poison food.