Snack Firm’s Workers Walk Out

After four months of increasingly bitter negotiations, more than 65 workers at Alex Snack Foods in Anaheim walked off the job Thursday.

All but three of the company’s 70 employees are participating in the strike, said Greg Conger, a spokesman for United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 551.

The walkout was approved by the union several weeks ago, and Conger said the workers originally had planned to strike next week. The schedule was moved up, he said, because Alex Foods began assigning heavy overtime this week to build up a backlog of products to help it weather a strike.

“It was time,” Conger said. “We’ve exhausted all of the non-strike measures we could think of. They wanted to get the most out of everyone before letting them go down the toilet.”

Alex Snack Foods makes and packages store-brand potato chips and corn chips and recently began packing under its own brand name.

The workers’ contract with Alex expired in December. Negotiations stalled last month when the company slashed the salaries of most of its employees, some by 41%, and eliminated all health benefits. Some of the workers have been employed at the plant for 30 years.

Company officials contend that the steep cuts were needed to remain competitive. “Our wage scale is higher than our competition. All we want to do is stop the losses . . .,” Steven Charton, a director and officer of Alex Snack Foods, said in an interview last month.

According to Charton, the privately held company has lost $500,000 in the past 2 1/2 years. On Thursday, Alex’s chief operating officer, Art Johnson, declined comment on any questions related to the strike.

By Thursday afternoon, with the strike only about 12 hours old, a picket allegedly was struck by the fender of a car driven by a member of the family that owns Alex Snack Foods.

Anaheim Police Lt. Bill Wright said witnesses gave conflicting accounts of the incident, in which the striker apparently was not injured. Wright said there probably will be no prosecution.