Lean Times : Agencies That Feed the Hungry Run Short During Market Strike

Normally the Eastmont Community Center gives away between 50 and 65 boxes of Thanksgiving food to needy families in East Los Angeles. This year the center is cutting back sharply. Only 27 Thanksgiving boxes will be given out, and seven of those will contain chicken, not turkey.

The Eastmont center and hundreds of other nonprofit agencies that provide food to hungry people are being squeezed by the stalemated Southern California supermarket strike-lockout, which has cut off much of the surplus food normally donated to charity by the market chains.

Lacking their normal corps of Teamsters Union drivers, the seven chains affected by the strike have stopped making most routine deliveries of surplus groceries to a network of large food banks that supply smaller agencies, according to a variety of food bank officials.

Los Angeles County’s biggest surplus food distributor, Community Food Resources in Vernon, said that donations from supermarkets make up 15% to 20% of the estimated 1.5 million pounds of food it receives and sends to the Eastmont Community Center and about 300 other local agencies each month.

Since the strike began on Nov. 5, however, supermarket donations have dwindled to a fraction of what they were, said Doris Bloch, Community Food Resources’ executive director.

Community Food Resources and the Long Beach Food Bank are the two main distribution points for hundreds of thousands of pounds of day-old bread, damaged canned goods and other surplus food donated by supermarket chains each year in Los Angeles County.

Patt Eriksen, the Long Beach Food Bank’s distribution analyst, said her food bank’s biggest hardship from the strike is cutbacks in the number of emergency food boxes the food bank gives to needy applicants.

“We’ve had to turn some people away,” she said. “That’s the part that really hurts.”

Mathew Packard, director of the San Diego Food Bank, which provides food to 170 member agencies, said the absence of donated deliveries from markets has decreased his organization’s food supplies between 20% and 30%. Packard said he believes that the chains have stopped their donations not only because of a shortage of drivers but because a clogged retail distribution system has meant less food on shelves and thus less damaged food available for donation.

As a result, representatives of several nonprofit agencies said they are having to choose between providing fewer Thanksgiving food boxes and maintaining their level of service by buying retail, rather than paying the 10-cents-a-pound fee charged by Community Food Resources.

A spokesman for the Food Employers Council, which represents the market chains, said logistical problems caused by the strike have affected donations of surplus food. Spokesmen for Ralphs and Vons, two of the chains being struck, said surplus food is still being made available to groups that can pick it up.

Bloch said her organization is seeking surplus food in other states that is available to the food bank if it pays freight costs. Forty-thousand pounds of apple juice was acquired from Virginia recently through Second Harvest, a national network of food banks, she said.

For retail shoppers, meanwhile, life in the aisles of a typical Southern California market continued to be a game of chance Tuesday.

A survey of two dozen Los Angeles County markets by Times reporters found that unpredictable shelf shortages were continuing.

Meanwhile, no future talks in the strike by 12,000 Teamster drivers and 10,000 members of the United Food and Commercial Workers, which represents meat cutters, were scheduled.

Federal mediator Frank Allen said he asked both sides Tuesday “to reassess their positions” to see if there is any room for compromise, and said he would be speaking to labor and management privately to see if a settlement can be reached in the strike-lockout, which was triggered by management’s attempt to weaken union work rules that the unions say are critical to job security.

Both unions are on strike against Vons and are locked out at six other chains: Albertson’s, Alpha Beta, Hughes Markets, Lucky, Ralphs and Safeway.

At some markets, there were few shortage problems Tuesday. Others, particularly those surveyed in West Los Angeles, had sharp shortages of frozen foods and dairy supplies and seemed to have been unable to recover from the weekend of heavy Thanksgiving shopping. Generally, shoppers enjoyed less variety than usual.

A Hughes market on National Boulevard, which last Thursday had no shortages, was running out of fresh fruit, frozen dinners, eggs and juice on Tuesday. A Lucky market in Santa Monica, which on Thursday was short only on milk, was by Tuesday running low on bread, butter, spices, milk, wine and frozen foods.

Spokesmen for the markets have insisted that shortages, which cropped up frequently in the first two weeks of the strike, are being eased as replacement drivers and other workers grow accustomed to the distribution process.

Business has boomed at independent markets that have been relatively unaffected by the strike. At a McCowans Market in San Pedro, co-owner Ted McCowan said Tuesday that business was up 20% to 30% and that he expected to run out of turkey by Thursday.

The labor dispute has had a minimal effect on turkey supplies because the supermarket chains contracted for the birds several months ago.

The food retailers’ planning for the Thanksgiving holiday included contingencies to deal with the strike and lockout beyond early turkey deliveries, according to one supermarket executive.

“The meat cutters’ and Teamsters’ contracts are always scheduled to expire at the same time, and that’s always a few weeks before the Thanksgiving season,” said Harland Polk, vice president of sales for Hughes Markets. “In the years we have had strikes, it is always at Thanksgiving. . . . It’s a (labor union) strategic move to have a strike at the holiday.”

In a related development, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Irving A. Shimer granted on Tuesday a preliminary injunction sought by the supermarkets reinforcing restrictions on Teamster picketing. The injunction essentially duplicates a series of temporary restraining orders that had limited pickets and strike activities at warehouses, distribution centers and two retail chains, Vons and Safeway. The order limits the Teamsters to five pickets at building entrances and bans blocking of entrances. Separate court orders restrict activities of the meat cutters’ union.

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Juan Arancibia, Sue Avery, Mayerene Barker, Jeff Burbank, Daniel P. Puzo, Roberto Rodriguez and Dorothy Townsend.