Latino Supermarket to Open in Valley

A subsidiary of Grupo Gigante, one of Mexico’s largest supermarket retailers, will officially open its first Valley store and only the second in the United States here today.

The 52,000-square-foot store has a meat market, a bakery, a large selection of fruits and vegetables, and Latino-themed products, said Justo Frias, president of Gigante USA, which is based in Santa Ana and Tijuana.

The chain is opening in a store in the 9700 block of Woodman Avenue formerly occupied by a Lucky supermarket. Gigante purchased the building earlier this year.

The new store will have about 200 employees, half of them full time, Frias said.

“We feel that it’s in an area that is underserved,” Frias said. “It’s time that Latinos are served, that supermarkets put in front of them reasonable prices.”

Gigante--which has more than 190 stores in Mexico--opened its first U.S. store in Pico Rivera in May and plans to open another in Covina next year.

Since its opening, the Pico Rivera store has been the target of protests by the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770 in Los Angeles. Workers have complained to the union of alleged abuses by Gigante, including intimidation and lack of promised wages and benefits, said Rene Castro, the union’s organizing coordinator.

Union officials have been distributing pamphlets criticizing Gigante at the Arleta store.

“[Gigante] is just contributing to a downward spiral of lower-wage jobs in this community,” Castro said.

Castro said most of the Pico Rivera employees are making slightly more than the minimum wage, although the company had promised higher wages to an employment agency that recruited the workers.

Frias denied the union’s charges and said most employees have chosen not to join a union. He said Gigante offers workers fair wages in a tough field where it faces competition from the large supermarket chains and other Latino-themed supermarkets, such as El Super and Vallarta Supermarket.

“We need to have prices that are equal or better than the competition,” Frias said. “We believe our pay is very similar to union contracts in effect today.”