Truckers’ Strike Has Some Areas Low on Tortillas

About 160 unionized truck drivers have gone on strike against Southern California’s largest tortilla manufacturer, and shortages are starting to crop up--dire news for devotees of a staple that has flat-out boomed in popularity even among non-Latino customers.

Because the strike so far hasn’t affected the company’s brand of tortillas marketed to non-Latinos, the shortages to date appear to be limited to Latino neighborhoods.

Striking members of Teamsters Local 63 contend that undelivered tortillas are piling up at the East Los Angeles factory of Gruma USA, makers of tortillas under the Mission and Guerrero labels.

But Gruma Chief Executive Naresh Nakra said the strike has hurt the company little. Gruma has hired temporary workers and rented trucks to deliver its Guerrero-label products, which are the only products affected by the strike, Nakra said.

“I hope this settles soon. We want our employees back,” Nakra said. “But we’re right now running business as usual.”

The 160 striking drivers represent nearly half of the Gruma drivers in Southern California, he said.

But the strike is an unwelcome disruption for Gruma because tortillas are hot these days and a host of competitors are pressing to pick up market share.

Tortillas have grown enormously in popularity during the last several years, rolling up sales gains of 9% to 10% annually. Gruma’s tortilla sales have been rising an average of 27% a year for the last few years, Nakra said.

Tortillas, for the most part, are either corn or flour--each with its devotees and special recipes.

But unlike even five years ago, supermarkets routinely carry a myriad of sizes and thicknesses of the basic tortilla.

And some stores and restaurants feature all sorts of mutations: fat-free flour tortillas, tomato-flavored tortillas, tortillas flecked with jalapeno bits, red-chili tortillas, even spinach tortillas.

Southern California, not surprisingly, is one of the biggest markets for tortillas in the nation. And Gruma is not only the biggest manufacturer in the biggest single market (claiming between 60% and 70%), it is also No. 1 nationwide, with 17% of the U.S. tortilla market.

Gruma is the U.S. arm of the controversial Grupo Industrial Maseca, which holds a virtual monopoly on the corn flour and tortilla business in Mexico.

Gruma’s big competitor in Southern California is Compton-based La Tapatia, which is owned by another large Mexican company, the Grupo Industrial Bimbo baking giant. La Tapatia was a locally owned family business until last year.

In front of Mission’s three local factories this week sit groups of disgruntled drivers, who struck the company on Sunday morning when their contract lapsed.

At issue are the usual things: pay, benefits and working conditions. Negotiations continue on and off.

“We’re just trying to negotiate a fair and decent contract for these guys,” said Bob Molina, president of Local 63. “Some of these guys are telling me that they haven’t had a raise in eight years.”

Nakra said that Gruma pays better than most of the industry. He says a typical Guerrero-label driver makes more than $500 for a six-day week, including commissions.

The strike is likely to deprive Latino customers more than Anglos. The company aims its Guerrero brand at the Latino consumer and directs its Mission-label tortillas, which have a different recipe, at a non-Latino audience.

So far, supermarket chains say they have not experienced a shortage of Mission-label products.

“Right now, they don’t think the strike will affect their ability to supply Vons with tortillas and their other Mexican food products,” said Vons spokesman Doug Hendrix.

But a spokeswoman for the Smart & Final chain said that some of the company’s inner-city stores are running low on Guerrero-label products.

“We hope it will be solved soon. This is a high-volume product in our stores,” she said.

“We make 50 million tortillas a day in all our plants and there are about 200 million people in the United States. That means I can sell everyone only one in four days,” Nakra reasoned. “So my objective is to make 200 million tortillas so I can sell everyone, every day.”

Gruma will tally tortilla sales of about $500 million this year nationwide, including a little less than $200 million in Southern California, Nakra said.

Gruma has invested heavily in automation at its 14 factories nationwide, some in such unlikely places as Jefferson, Ga., and McMinnville, Ore.

The East Los Angeles plant is the largest and most technologically advanced tortilla-making factory in the world, churning out 15 million tortillas a day, Nakra said.