Countywide : Grocers Are Stocking Up for a Strike

Grocery store workers in Orange County began stocking the shelves a little fuller than normal Wednesday, and some also began lining up new jobs as Southern California’s supermarket strike loomed.

Although negotiators for the supermarket chains and the union returned to the table Wednesday, store managers here were accepting applications for temporary help and, in at least one store, training potential workers.

Tom Tyler, a service manager at a Vons in Santa Ana, said that although he doesn’t think the workers will strike, he is taking applications and planning to work longer shifts.

By midday, shelves at many stores were heavily stocked. Martha Gallegos of Anaheim, who was shopping in a Vons store, noticed the difference.

“They played it pretty smart--they stocked well,” Gallegos said.

Meanwhile Wednesday, dozens of workers stopped at the United Food and Commercial Workers’ Local 324 in Buena Park to vote on the supermarkets’ latest offer.

“They want to take away everything and they aren’t giving anything,” said Janet Jimenez, a 26-year-old single mother of two who works in the delicatessen at a Lucky store in Orange. Her 8-year-old daughter has leukemia, and Lucky’s medical benefits pay the weekly $400 doctor bills, she said.

“The reason I went into grocery is because I can work 16 hours and still get my benefits,” Jimenez said. “If I had another job, I’d have to work 40 and would never get to spend any time with my daughter.” She said she has already lined up another job if she has to strike.

Pamela Lane, 31, who works with Jimenez, said, “We’ll sit out until the money runs out. Then we’ll get a (non-union) job at McDonald’s. We already feel like we’re getting the bottom of the bowl. And now they want to take more from us.”

Some union members supported the contract, saying they didn’t trust union leaders because they hadn’t been kept informed.

“What the union has to do is get the members to believe they are for them,” said Ike Marshell, a Cerritos Alpha Beta employee for 21 years. “How can you vote on something they don’t tell you about? And how come we didn’t see the offer they refused?”