Workers’ Beef Has Both Sides Simmering at Deli : Labor: Although there is no strike, some employees are picketing Canter’s. They are upset by union benefits changes.

Margy Handley, a union waitress for 30 years, would not give two cents for Local 11 of the Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union, which has not signed a contract with Canter’s deli--the biggest unionized restaurant in Los Angeles--since 1985.

“You don’t need a union for this type of work anymore,” said Handley, who has been slinging pastrami at the noted Fairfax Avenue deli for seven years, long enough to know what her regulars want for lunch without having to ask.

She gets by quite nicely on tips despite her minimum-wage salary, and she said she wants nothing to do with the pickets who have been trudging up and down outside Canter’s since October to protest the owners’ withdrawal from the union’s health and pension plans.

Rogelio Vasquez, a dishwasher and union man from his toes to the top of his Local 11 baseball cap, is one of those pickets.

Six days a week, he has been hitting the bricks before work, after work and during breaks, carrying signs that urge customers to boycott his employer of 25 years. The workers are not on strike.

“We are on the street because we demand a fair contract,” said Vasquez, one of a group of seven relatives, all Canter’s workers, who have been the core of the protest. “We want the (union’s) medical plan, (the union’s) pension, better salary and respect at work.”

The prune Danish may be sweet but labor relations have turned bitter at Canter’s, a family-owned, 24-hour landmark with an eclectic clientele and an extensive menu featuring oversized sandwiches, pungent pickles and bread and rolls from its own bakery.

Local 11 remains the authorized bargaining agent for 125 of the eatery’s 150 unionized employees, including waiters, waitresses, deli men, cooks, busboys and dishwashers, but management hopes that workers such as Handley will help vote it out.

Terri Bloomgarden, the restaurant’s chief financial officer, said the owners would have been willing to keep the old contract, which renewed itself automatically every year since 1985.

But a union demand for increased health and pension benefits was just too much, she said, especially because Canter’s finds itself competing with dozens of newly opened, non-union establishments on Melrose Avenue and elsewhere in the area.

Management also was upset to find that 50 of its workers were not signed up for the union’s medical plan, she said.

“They were not spending the money that we were paying them,” said Bloomgarden, a granddaughter of one of the original Canter brothers, who opened their first deli in Boyle Heights in the 1920s.

“We may be a big business, but we’re dependent on the public,” she said. “We only have X amount of money coming in. We have only so many ways to spend that money. If they’re asking us 25% more than we’re paying, and not covering 25% of our employees, we’re throwing money away.”

Union spokesmen insisted that all eligible employees had been covered by the union health plan and said that they expect to stay at Canter’s. They conceded that a decertification vote would be close.

Enough of the 125 workers covered by Local 11 signed a petition to require such a vote last year, but the balloting has been delayed by a series of charges and countercharges.

“They’re not looking for relief in one area or another, they just don’t want the union in there,” said Maria Elena Durazo, president of Local 11.

Durazo, leader of a militant faction that won control of the union three years ago, said that Local 11 has been “very flexible there in not pressing the restaurant for wage increases because we understood and everybody understood the economic considerations.”

She said that pensions, health care and job security differentiate a union restaurant from a non-union house, and because of Canter’s size and fame, “It’s very important in terms of the entire industry, as to what kind of example to set in these contract negotiations.”

Durazo said that the union intends to step up its boycott effort by increasing the hours of picketing and launching a leafletting campaign directed at nearby businesses and neighborhoods.

“We have no choice but to do that,” said Karine Mansoorian, the union’s restaurant division coordinator. “We have to put enough pressure for them to come back to the (negotiating) table.”

Meanwhile, a banner hanging over Canter’s parking lot declares that it is staffed by “happy employees,” and passersby who talk to union activists on the sidewalk are often caught in the middle when Canter family members approach to give their side of the argument.

“We counter-picket because we don’t appreciate lies being told about us,” said Bloomgarden.

The union has charged that Canter’s management spied on picketing workers, barred them from leaving the restaurant during break time, offered other workers cash inducements to take off their union buttons and bypassed the union to negotiate directly with individual employees.

Management has charged that union members threatened a worker because he refused to join the picket line.

“Hopefully, we’ll have a vote soon, by the end of February,” said Marc Canter, one of seven family members who help run the restaurant.

Federal rules say that an election cannot be held until 60 days after all allegations are cleared, and in the hostile atmosphere that prevails, new charges are being filed every month.

In talks that reached a stalemate last July, the union said that management should increase its health-care payments to reflect increased charges by Kaiser Permanente, the union’s health-maintenance organization.

On Aug. 1, the owners declared the talks to be at an impasse and implemented their last offer, granting modest wage increases to some workers and substituting a different health plan.

Management also stopped its contributions to the union pension plan, promising instead to give some workers a yearly cash payment of $350 to $400.

The fight with Local 11 is not Canter’s only labor pain. Andrea Zinder, director of research and collective bargaining for Retail Clerks Local 770 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, said that her union was withdrawing its coverage of a handful of bakery saleswomen because Canter’s insisted on a one-year pact while the union wanted a three-year contract.

“It’s very surprising, because Canter’s has had a long history of being a good union company and treating its employees fairly, and now they’ve really taken a turn,” Zinder said.

She said that she urged the bakery clerks to find jobs elsewhere, but Bloomgarden said that while Canter’s was willing to extend its previous contract for one year, it could now offer the clerks better benefits.