Signs Point to Tentative Accord on Market Pact : Labor: Overnight talks see dawn of a more cooperative spirit. Despite compromise, however, sticky issues remain.

After averting a threatened strike and bargaining until dawn, negotiators for 80,000 supermarket workers and 800 markets resumed discussions Tuesday afternoon amid signs that a tentative contract settlement could be reached by night’s end.

“I don’t think we would have gone this far if we didn’t have a reasonable expectation,” of an agreement, said Rick Icaza, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770, one of the 10 UFCW locals involved in the negotiations.

“I think there’s a good chance” of a settlement, said David Willauer, spokesman for the Food Employers Council, which is negotiating on behalf of Ralphs, Vons, Alpha Beta, Lucky, Stater Bros. and Albertson’s.

After a month and a half of fruitless bargaining on a new three-year contract, the union set a midnight Monday deadline, vowing to strike unless a settlement was reached.

Five hours before the deadline the two sides reached their first significant compromise. Ninety minutes before the deadline the union agreed to “stop the clock” and bargain past midnight.

Negotiations went on until 5 a.m. Tuesday, when the fatigued participants agreed to take a break.

The mood of the two sides was described as “amicable, rather than adversarial,” by federal mediator Frank Allen, who has monitored food-industry collective bargaining for two decades.

Monday night was the third time in nine days that the union had backed off from a strike deadline.

The first occurred July 30, the night the old contact expired. A revised offer from the Food Employers Council encouraged the union to keep talking, but negotiations broke off a day later. The markets made another contract offer last week, which was rejected by more than 90% of the union members who voted on it. The union threatened to strike on Friday. But intervention by Allen persuaded the union to move the deadline to Monday night.

In agreeing to continue bargaining past midnight Monday, union leaders reserved the right to quit at any time and go on strike with 90 minutes’ notice. They repeated that threat Tuesday. But it was clear from comments made by both sides that a more cooperative spirit was emerging.

“I don’t think the union wants to strike any more than the employers,” Icaza said.

Sticky issues remained, however, including union demands for more guaranteed hours of work, supermarket demands for a cheaper and less flexible medical benefit package, and the union’s demand for restrictions on the use of non-union vendors.

The first sign of progress Monday night was a compromise on the markets’ use of prepackaged meat as opposed to meat cut and wrapped in the market by union members. Sources familiar with the negotiation said markets agreed to limit prepackaged meat to 50% of a store’s supply.

Union Negotiators also indicated that they were backing off from their demand that markets raise the number of guaranteed weekly hours, a sensitive subject in an industry where two-thirds of the work force consists of part-time employees.

The markets wantto tie an increase in guaranteed hours to an increase in the number of hours required to qualify for health benefits. The proposal would effectively made entry-level clerks ineligible for health-maintenance-organization benefits.

“There are still some major issues out there,” said Tom Vanderveld, president of San Diego-based Local 135.

Union sources said Tuesday they believed their bargaining position had been bolstered by strong support from Teamster union executives, who represent market truck drivers. The sources said the Teamsters promised not only to stop delivery trucks at supermarket picket lines, but to refuse to drive trucks out of outlying warehouses if striking clerks and meat cutters picketed there.

The six market chains will be bargaining on a new contract with Teamsters next year.

About 73,000 supermarket clerks now earn between $4.25 and $13.05 an hour. About 7,000 meat cutters earn from $9.31 to $14.33 an hour.

The most recent pay offer made public by the supermarkets would provide three-year raises of between 9.8% and 10.7% to journeyman employees. The average collective bargaining agreement negotiated during the first half of 1990 contains an 11.4% increase over three years.