Tensions Rise on Picket Lines

On a cold, clear night in Orange County, a woman with a shopping list and a supermarket worker with a picket sign braced for a confrontation.

The shopper, a well-dressed 30-something in a black leather coat, quickened her pace as she approached the Albertsons store. Picket captain Miguel Chavez took his best shot.

“Shame on you. Why do you cross our picket lines? You can shop at Ralphs, Food 4 Less, Stater Bros.,” Chavez said.

The woman, eyes down, walked on into the store.

The scene, or one like it, has been repeated countless times since the strike and lockout of 70,000 union supermarket workers in Southern and Central California began Oct. 11.

If sometimes tense, picket-crossing encounters have almost all involved words and nothing more. But with the labor dispute showing no sign of ending, some say there is a rising pitch to the exchanges.

“What we are having is the pickets are a little louder, a little more vocal in talking to customers,” said Lt. David Wilson, a watch commander for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. “They are just being a little more boisterous.”

According to Chavez, there’s a reason: Union workers need to get shoppers’ attention to get their message across.

“We have to prove that we are here no matter how long it takes,” he said. “Jump. Scream. Tell people they shouldn’t cross the line.”

Union leaders say they are aware of the potential for trouble as frustrated workers collecting a fraction of their normal pay on the picket lines watch the holidays approach. Picket captains have been told to remind their members to stay cool, said Connie Leyva, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1428, which includes the San Gabriel Valley and parts of the Inland Empire.

“I tell them to try to focus on the positive,” Leyva said. “When I am on the line with people, I tell them to say ‘Have a nice day’ to the rude and belligerent people. This is not someone that they are going to turn around.”

Supermarket representatives declined to discuss the behavior of pickets during the strike.

Law enforcement agencies have reported a handful of incidents that escalated to violence.

In Laguna Beach, a picket allegedly followed a group of four teenagers who had crossed his line to their home, kicked their car and threatened them with a baseball bat. An Albertsons shopper in Glendora said her car was vandalized after she refused to accept a flier from a picket. And in El Cajon, a picket was arrested on suspicion of hitting a 13-year-old girl on the head with a picket sign.

Authorities also say striking grocery workers were hit by pellets fired from a car passing by an Albertsons in Riverside. Also in Riverside, a beer bottle was thrown at pickets at a Ralphs.

Even so, Sgt. Frank Arvizu, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, echoed other police representatives in characterizing the situation overall as calm. “For as long as they have been out, it’s been pretty quiet,” Arvizu said.

Members of the UFCW struck Safeway Inc.’s Vons and Pavilions stores Oct. 11 after talks on a new contract broke down. Albertsons Inc. and Ralphs, a unit of Kroger Co., which bargain jointly with Safeway, locked out their workers the next day.

Many customers have faithfully honored the picket lines, which the UFCW removed from Ralphs stores Oct. 31 to provide a relief valve for shoppers and to focus pressure on Safeway and Albertsons.

Still, with federally mediated talks breaking down Sunday, some of the striking and locked-out workers say feelings on both sides are hardening. Some shoppers, they say, are now openly contemptuous of the pickets as they enter stores.

“People are much more willing to defend themselves,” said Jennifer Jacques, 41, a locked-out Ralphs worker walking the picket line at an Albertsons in Stanton.

Shoppers used to take the union’s fliers when they were offered, she added. “Now, they don’t take them or they just throw it on the ground. I haven’t seen anyone turn around and not go into the store in weeks now.”

Delia Castellano, a 58-year-old locked-out checker at the Albertsons, said she was telling shoppers that if the supermarkets succeeded in cutting back on company-paid health benefits, the same thing could happen to shoppers’ employer-sponsored health plans.

People respond, Castellano said, by walking on, not making eye contact or uttering a word in response.

Not all of the confrontations are strident. At an Albertsons in Reseda, Teresa Paglinawan recently recognized some of her regular customers crossing the line -- and said little to stop them. “They said, ‘I’m sorry, you’ve been out too long,’ ” said Paglinawan, who works in the store’s deli.

But few crossings are easy. Maricela Contreras, a 28-year-old clerk, said she has worked at the Albertsons in Reseda since she was 17.

“For them to cross this line hurts me,” she said. “For them to look at me like I’m nothing truly hurts me.”

--- UNPUBLISHED NOTE ---

On February 12, 2004 the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which had stated repeatedly that 70,000 workers were involved in the supermarket labor dispute in Central and Southern California, said that the number of people on strike or locked out was actually 59,000. A union spokeswoman, Barbara Maynard, said that 70,000 UFCW members were, in fact, covered by the labor contract with supermarkets that expired last year. But 11,000 of them worked for Stater Bros. Holdings Inc., Arden Group Inc.’s Gelson’s and other regional grocery companies and were still on the job. (See: “UFCW Revises Number of Workers in Labor Dispute,” Los Angeles Times, February 13, 2004, Business C-11)

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