Dispute Enters 2nd Month : Market Strike Slowly Wearing Unions Down

“My superior told me early in the year, ‘You better save some money. You guys are going to be out a long time,’ ” said John Canova, on strike from his job in the meat department of a Vons market in Paramount. “So what I did was start working six days a week, and I took the extra money and set it away.”

Most of the 22,000 meat cutters and Teamsters involved in the Southern California supermarket labor dispute were not as fortunate or savvy as Canova. As the strike-lockout at seven supermarket chains enters its second month today, their financial and emotional ability to stay off the job is being slowly ground down.

The workers are beset by several factors: the economic pressure of living through the Christmas season on strike pay as low as $45 a week and no company-paid medical benefits, the frustration at their unions’ inability to sell labor’s case to the public, the fact that supermarket shelf shortages have not seriously inconvenienced most customers and the lack of any visible progress in negotiations, which have broken down repeatedly.

(Negotiators for the markets and the Teamsters returned to the bargaining table Wednesday to discuss what a management spokesman called “a significant” new offer from the markets. No immediate progress was reported.)

The lowest strike pay is in Orange County, where a union local did not build up a strike fund, as did locals in Los Angeles County.

Some strikers in Orange County said in recent interviews that they’re facing financial emergencies.

“I’ve been living on my savings,” said Teamster Mike St. Onge, holding a picket sign outside a Lucky market warehouse in Buena Park. “But after the first of the year I’m going to have to go back to work somewhere.”

“If they’re not talking, why should we be walking?” asked an Albertson’s meat department worker as she stood with a picket sign outside the entrance to a Vons market in Downey.

‘Have to Go Back’

“We’re getting impatient,” added another picket at the market, Peter Bongiovanni.

Whether the impatience will push the Teamsters or the United & Commercial Food Workers into accepting some of the union changes in work rules demanded by Southland supermarkets is unclear. What is apparent is that individual employees are far less able to tolerate a prolonged strike than the supermarket chains, which recorded profits ranging from $23 million to $185 million last year.

A frustration for many of the affected employees is the fact that they are locked out, rather than on strike.

The only chain that workers are striking is Vons. There, meat cutters and Teamsters have the ability to cross the picket line and go back to work if they agree to give up their union membership, according to letters the market recently sent to the strikers.

The other six chains--Alpha Beta, Safeway, Lucky, Albertson’s, Hughes and Ralphs--locked out the two unions in a show of management solidarity when the strike against Vons began on Nov. 5. Those workers have nothing to say about when they will return. Nor can they collect unemployment benefits. Workers involved in any trade dispute are not eligible for benefits regardless of whether they are striking or locked out, state Employment Development Department policy says.

Pressure on Workers

Management’s strategy is to put pressure on as many union members as possible to push the unions into accepting the supermarkets’ major demands: weakening of union work rules so that the markets can use more lower-paid, non-union workers and create a two-tier pay system so that union members hired after new contracts are signed will be paid substantially lower wages.

Both sides have issued no-compromise declarations and accused their rivals of hardheadedness.

The chains, despite their profits, say they must cut labor costs to compete against non-union discount stores and drugstores. The unions say they fear that the markets will manipulate more flexible work rules to cut the hours of higher-paid veteran employees. They insist that any contract include a management promise that the new rules will not affect job security, directly or indirectly.

Without work-rule concessions from the unions, “the strike will not end,” said David Willauer, a spokesman for the Food Employers Council, which represents the markets.

Without a job security guarantee from the markets, “there won’t be an agreement,” said Jerry Menapace, head of the retailing division of the United Food & Commercial Workers, which represents the meat cutters.

Publicly, the unions contend that the resolve of their members in this strike is higher than it would be over issues of hourly wages. And many Teamsters, such as Lucky driver Gerald Costanzo, insist that “we’ve got to fight this one out ‘cause if we don’t we’ll be dog meat afterwards.”

‘They Can Starve You’

Joe Foss, a business agent for a Teamsters local in Orange County who spends his time talking to picketing Teamsters, said, however, that such resolve is difficult to maintain as the strike drags on.

The markets are “going to break the people. There’s no doubt about that,” Foss said. “Let’s face it--45 bucks a week and the company’s got billions of dollars. They can starve you out. That’s sad.”

Foss’ Local 952, which represents about 3,500 warehousemen, drivers and office workers for Lucky, Alpha Beta and Albertson’s, is in particularly difficult straits.

Because the local had enjoyed a placid relationship with Orange County markets since the last strike against Southern California market chains, in 1973, members decided not to assess themselves additional payments to create a strike fund. Thus their weekly strike pay--which they receive in exchange for picketing four hours a day, seven days a week--is the $45 paid by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

By contrast, Teamsters Local 848, which represents Los Angeles market drivers, built up a $5-million strike fund and pays a combined national and local strike benefit of $166 a week, according to its executive director, Jim Santangelo.

By agreement of their leaders, each meat cutters union local pays the same strike benefits of $150 a week.

‘Gets You Down’

A number of pickets said they were disheartened by comments made by passing supermarket shoppers who accused them of being greedy. As the union is trying to explain this week in a series of newspaper advertisements, the stickiest issues in the dispute involve not money but questions of whether unions should give up prized work rules that labor has historically contended are needed to protect workers.

“I’ve been called a communist,” said Esmael Mendoza, a butchers union member. “They think you’re out here causing trouble. It kind of gets you down.”

Added Judy DiGiovanni, a Teamster who works in a Lucky headquarters office: “I’m sick of people saying, ‘Aw, you just want more money.’ The markets just want more money. It’s greed. I don’t want to make more money. I just want job security.”

In an effort to sell that viewpoint, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor and the AFL-CIO’s Los Angeles-Orange County Organizing Committee will sponsor a rally in support of the union members at 11:30 a.m. Saturday at the bandstand in Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park.