Grocers, Union Leaders to Meet With Mediator
A federal mediator will meet today with leaders of the union representing 70,000 Southern California grocery workers and executives from three supermarket chains in their first talks since the beginning of a month-old strike and lockout, union officials said.
“We will go into mediation on Monday with an open mind and some level of flexibility,” John Arnold, spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers union, said Friday.
Peter J. Hurtgen, director of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, initiated the meeting. Hurtgen said in a statement Friday that he had asked the parties to “refrain from providing details of the talks.”
But both sides were careful not to raise expectations.
“I’m going in good faith, but I’m not optimistic that this will lead to an end of the strike,” Rick Icaza, president of UFCW Local 770 in Los Angeles, said Friday.
The union called a strike against Safeway Inc.’s Vons and Pavilions stores Oct. 11 and rival chains Albertsons Inc. and Kroger Co., which owns the local Ralphs chain, responded by locking out union workers.
Since then there has been little movement in the contract talks, which have centered on health-care costs. Business at all three supermarket chains has been decidedly slower as customers hesitated to cross picket lines. The UFCW withdrew pickets from Ralphs on Oct. 31 in an apparent bid to foster corporate disunity and win public favor.
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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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