Lucky, Alpha Beta Unions Decry Van de Kamp’s Suit

Officials of seven labor union locals representing workers at Lucky and Alpha Beta supermarkets in Southern California on Thursday denounced state Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp’s lawsuit to block the merger of the two chains.

“If the Van de Kamp suit succeeds, consumers in Southern California will suffer higher food prices and many jobs will be lost,” the United Food & Commercial Workers Union locals said in a prepared statement.

A spokesman for the union said the labor leaders had no plans to intercede in the court case, however.

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge David Kenyon granted Van de Kamp a temporary restaining order blocking the merger of the two chains until a Sept. 16 hearing on whether to take the attorney general’s antitrust suit to trial.

Attorneys for Alpha Beta’s parent, American Stores Co. of Irvine, which acquired Lucky Stores in June for $2.5 billion and has since been preparing to merge the two chains, filed a motion with Kenyon on Thursday seeking to dismiss Van de Kamp’s suit.

They also obtained a clarification of the judge’s Wednesday ruling. The clarification says that American Stores officials will not have to reverse any of the merger arrangements made through Sept. 6.

In their brief statement Thursday, the food workers union locals claimed that because Van de Kamp is seeking to force American Stores to divest itself of some of the nearly 600 Alpha Beta and Lucky stores it will own in California, the net result will be increased prices, lowered wages and the loss of jobs and of union membership.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Chester Horn scoffed at the charges, maintaining that the Van de Kamp suit would not “cost a single job in California, because we are not asking for the closure of any stores.”

Union spokesman Bob Bleiweiss, however, said the labor officials believe that Van de Kamp wants American Stores to sell many of its stores “and, inevitably, when a major chain sells stores in California it sells to independents, who almost always raise prices. Independents also aren’t union shops,” he said, “so they pay lower wages and some of them probably will shut stores down and make parking lots out of them.”

Bleiweiss said the union also has been trying to begin negotiations with American Stores on adapting existing labor contracts to the merger and won’t be able to start until the suit is resolved.

Staff Writer Mary Ann Galante also contributed to this story.