PepsiCo Workers Walk Out at Southland Bottling Plants : Labor: Picketing begins in Buena Park. Strike over pensions threatens Fourth of July weekend distribution.

Workers at four PepsiCo Inc. bottling plants in Southern California walked out on strike Wednesday in a dispute over pension benefits, threatening the company’s distribution plans for the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

Picketing began at the company-owned bottling plant in Buena Park and was scheduled to begin at sister plants in Baldwin Park, Torrance and San Fernando.

Locals representing about 700 PepsiCo drivers, warehouse workers and other employees--including 250 at the Buena Park plant--voted Monday to reject a contract proposal mainly because it failed to include sufficient provisions for retirement.

The company brought in 100 managers and temporary employees to keep the plants in operation, said PepsiCo spokesman Jeff Brown. The upcoming holiday weekend is one of Pepsi’s largest-volume weekends of the year, he said.

“We don’t think the strike is justified, and we had wanted to go forward in negotiations,” Brown said. “We were surprised at the timing.”

The union had not expected to begin the strike until next week, said Jim Santangelo, chief negotiator for the Teamsters, but he contended that PepsiCo managers provoked the strike by telling union members Wednesday morning to begin training managers and temporary employees to take over their jobs in case of a strike.

“They brought in scabs and had our guys training them,” Santangelo said. “That’s when we said that this is cutting our hearts out.”