Labor Struggle Erupts at Grocery Chain : Jobs: Unionists, foes collide at Montebello store. Both sides say dispute is pivotal for the local supermarket industry.

Supporters and opponents of a union representing supermarket employees traded insults and shouted conflicting slogans outside a Montebello warehouse store Friday in a dispute that both sides say signals a pivotal labor struggle affecting an important Southern California industry.

“Supermarket jobs are probably the last good jobs left in the inner city, and we’re not going to give up benefits it took us 50 years of struggle to win,” said Ricardo Icaza, president of Local 770 of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents 80,000 workers throughout Southern California.

The union, with support from other labor groups, lawmakers and Roman Catholic clerics, threw up a picket line outside the new Superior Super Warehouse, a non-union operation that opened this week and is part of a Lynwood-based chain that now has five outlets and employs about 1,000 people.

The union is attempting to organize Superior workers. Labor leaders are urging consumers not to shop at the Montebello site and other Superior stores scheduled to open in coming weeks in Cudahy and Huntington Park.

The union accused Superior of discriminating against Latinos by paying them low wages--a charge dismissed as “totally false” by Tim Ortiz, vice president of operations for Superior.

The issue is especially sensitive because the targeted non-union stores are in largely Latino sections of southeastern Los Angeles County, and the work forces and clientele are also mostly Latino.

On Friday, union activists invoked the name of Cesar Chavez, the late farm workers leader who was arrested five years ago during a protest at the same site, then a Vons market. Chavez and supporters were protesting pesticide use on grapes.

According to union officials, Superior workers are typically paid $6 an hour--less than half the union standard--and most lack medical and other benefits. At a press conference, union representatives harshly accused Superior and its founder, James Oh, of padding profits by undermining the regional supermarket pay scale--part of a broader national trend, the labor leaders said.

“The working poor are increasing every day at the same time that corporate profits are rising,” said Sean Harrigan, international vice president of the food workers union.

Ortiz, the Superior representative, declined to specify the salaries of workers but said medical benefits were provided for employees and their families. He described Superior’s non-union status as essential, eliminating the need for a “third party intermediary” between management and workers.

“We pay very fair wages and we offer great prices to our customers,” said Ortiz, who observed proceedings from the Superior parking lot.

The dispute illustrates how unionized supermarket jobs, once favored by students, housewives and other part-timers, have become prized positions in Southern California’s economy, providing the kind of pay and benefits once associated with heavy industry. Those competing for the slots include the region’s huge pool of immigrant job-seekers.

Union leaders, who have contracts with most major area supermarket chains, have watched with growing trepidation as non-union competition such as Superior has emerged and challenged the existing structure.

Icaza said the food workers union represents about 80% of supermarket workers in Southern California, down from 90% just 10 years ago. The non-union operations, with substantially lower labor costs than their unionized counterparts, can sell goods for much less, squeezing their long-established competition.