Vons Continues to Underpay Janitors, Labor Group Says

Labor advocates Monday accused some Vons supermarkets of continuing to pay janitors illegally low wages, moments after a federal judge approved the $22.4-million settlement of a class-action lawsuit that had accused Vons and two other grocery chains of such violations.

Lilia Garcia, director of the union-funded Maintenance Cooperation Task Force, said the task force had interviewed janitors at more than a dozen stores in Los Angeles and Orange counties in the last three months “and found a lot of problems.”

“The pay is a little better, but they’re still working six or seven days a week,” she said, “and there’s still the overtime problem.”

Janitors interviewed by the task force said they weren’t paid overtime premiums despite their long hours and, in some cases, were paid less than the state minimum wage, Garcia said.

She said the group would either file another lawsuit against Vons or lodge formal complaints with state labor investigators, adding that similar problems weren’t found during checks of stores operated by Ralphs Grocery Co. and Albertsons Inc., the two other chains involved in the settlement approved Monday.

A spokeswoman for Safeway Inc., which owns Vons, declined to discuss the settlement or the new allegations.

Vons, like the other chains, had argued that it wasn’t responsible for wage and hour violations outlined in the suit because the janitors were provided by contractors.

The suit, which was filed in November 2000, claimed that the chains exercised so much control over janitors’ hours and working conditions that they were in effect joint employers. The supermarkets should have known they were paying too little to cover legal wages and other required expenses, such as workers’ compensation insurance, the suit said.

In 2003, all three chains signed contracts with the Service Employees International Union pledging to bring janitors back on staff or hire contractors that paid union wages.

The contract covering Vons staff janitors, represented by SEIU Local 1877, expired on Monday. According to the previous contract, most Vons stores should now be cleaned by staff janitors. But Guillermo Flores, a Vons janitor for 19 years who is on the negotiating committee, said that about half of all Vons stores were still being contracted out.

Mainly from rural Mexico, the janitors worked through the night, often without a day off for weeks at a time, according to the suit. State investigators -- who filed criminal charges against the contracting firms -- said some janitors were paid as little as $2.47 an hour.

Two years ago, federal investigators accused Wal-Mart Stores Inc. of engaging in similar practices with its janitors. The SEIU recently brought a lawsuit against United Parcel Service Inc., alleging problems with janitors at its facilities in Illinois and Texas.

Flores, the union janitor, said he met a contracted janitor at Vons last year who was being denied overtime pay. He said he was surprised that the practice continued in light of the suit.

“They keep doing the same thing,” Flores said Monday after the settlement hearing. “It seems to me if you lose one time and keep doing the same thing, that’s not very intelligent.”

As part of the settlement, the chains, the union and Latino rights organizations searched for members of the class throughout the U.S. and Mexico. In the end, 2,000 were identified. They will share the settlement depending on the number of overall hours worked, with some receiving as much as $10,000 each.

The settlement was announced in December but wasn’t officially accepted by the court until Monday.