Warehouse Workers Induce Teamsters to Renew Negotiations

After an angry, shouting confrontation with about 150 of their own members Saturday, Teamsters officials reopened negotiations with Alpha Beta Co. in a last-ditch effort to avert the threatened closing of the supermarket chain’s regional warehouse in Fullerton.

After four hours of negotiating Friday night, leaders of Teamsters Local 952 in Orange had announced that they had rejected Alpha Beta’s proposal of much lower starting salaries for future warehouse workers. The company had insisted that without the lower starting salaries it would close the warehouse, where about 300 union and non-union workers are employed.

But Saturday morning, about 150 of the warehouse’s 185 union workers gathered at the Teamsters hall in Orange for a previously scheduled, closed-door meeting with union officers. Reporters were excluded, but even on the sidewalk loud shouts of anger could be heard from the meeting room.

Rebuke Mentioned

Union workers emerging from the hourlong meeting said local members rebuked Gerald Scott, Local 952’s secretary-treasurer, for refusing to yield to Alpha Beta’s demands. According to several reports, one member became so irate that some of the burly Teamsters security guards patrolling the meeting restrained him.

During the meeting, those in attendance voted informally and without dissent to accept the company’s proposal, several members said. The group demanded that Scott contact Alpha Beta officials and tell them their offer had been accepted.

David Willauer, a spokesman for Alpha Beta, said that Scott telephoned company officials Saturday and that a negotiating session was scheduled for Monday.

Earl Pedford, union steward at the warehouse, said that union officers “were trying to get us to look at the overall effect of this on the union. I told them, ‘You got to respect these people out here.’ ”

Pedford said he agreed that accepting the company demands for a large salary concession only 13 days after a hard-fought strike ended “would show a weakness in the union.”

He said, however, that there was no other way to preserve the warehouse jobs. Accepting the company’s terms “is all we got,” Pedford said. “Time is something we don’t have.”

Willauer said the gradual closing of the warehouse began a week ago when it appeared the Teamsters would not budge from the wage rates specified in the new contract.

According to union sources, about 72 of the 185 union members were being summoned back to work at the warehouse Monday, and those workers were expected to be out of work within a month or two.

Deadline Relaxation

“In order the reverse the (phase-out), something has to be done right now,” Willauer said. “When we meet on Monday, that’s going to be probably it. I suppose that (deadline) could be relaxed a little, but that’s an Alpha Beta decision.”

Willauer said the company is willing to guarantee that present union members will not be displaced nor their work schedules reduced.

Under the new contract that ended the 54-day supermarket strike of Teamsters and meat cutters, experienced warehouse workers already employed are being paid $13.85 per hour. Future warehouse employees would start at 70% of that wage, eventually rising to 90%.

But under Alpha Beta’s new proposal, the starting wage for new workers at the Fullerton warehouse would be $6.54 per hour--less than half the “experienced” rate--eventually rising to $9.35 per hour.

Repeated requests by reporters to interview Scott were turned away by aides.