Newsroom

By Peter Dreier
Guest Columnist
LA Daily News
July 25, 2007

Dodgers pitcher Brad Penny, who suffered a big slump in the second half of last season, is having a great year so far. But my nominee for the "comeback of the year" award is the United Food and Commercial Workers, the union that represents 65,000 grocery workers from Bakersfield to the Mexican border.

Earlier this week, the workers voted to approve a new contract with Southern California's three major supermarket chains - Ralphs, Albertson's and Vons. The settlement restores almost all the losses in pay and health benefits that employees suffered three years ago following a 141-day strike and lockout. Once again, working at a unionized grocery chain store will mean solid, secure middle-class jobs that can sustain families and the economic vitality of communities.

By Jerry Hirsch
Los Angeles Times
July 24, 2007

The new labor agreement for Southern California grocery workers approved over the weekend contains a cautionary message for employers: Two-tier pay scales are trouble.

Although that approach may slash labor expenses, it also can divide a workforce into groups of haves and have-nots, labor experts say, and it doesn't always turn out to be the cost-saver companies expect.

Union officials said Monday that 87% of Southern California grocery workers who voted approved a new contract that tossed out a controversial two-tier pay scale that was included in the last contract.

"This is partially an admission that two-tier systems don't work," said Ken Jacobs, chairman of the UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education.

By Alex Veiga
Associated Press
July 23, 2007

Workers at three major Southern California supermarket chains overwhelmingly approved a new contract that provides their first raise in five years and rolls back key wage and benefit concessions made after a 141-day strike-lockout in 2004, union officials said Monday.

The deal was ratified by more than 87 percent of the workers who voted during the weekend, according to the United Food and Commercial Workers union.

More than half of the 65,000 workers at nearly 800 stores cast ballots, said Sandra Lloyd-Jones, a UFCW spokeswoman.

"We stood up to the employers and we demanded a fair contract and we got one," said Sharlette Villacorta, an Albertsons employee in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Los Feliz.

By Penni Crabtree
San Diego Union-Tribune
July 17, 2007

Marathon bargaining sessions continued yesterday between three supermarket chains and the union that represents 65,000 Southern California grocery workers, after “significant” progress in contract negotiations, according to those close to the talks.

But contentious issues remain in the areas of wage increases and funding improvements in health insurance coverage, a spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers union said yesterday.

“We've talked through the weekend and we're still at the table, but we are not there on wages and haven't even talked about health care funding,” said Mike Shimpock, spokesman for the union. “We will stay at the table as long as we are making progress, and we feel we are making progress now.”

By Ruth Milkman, professor of sociology and director of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, is the author of "L.A. Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement.
Los Angeles Times
July 15, 2007

WITH Southern California's supermarket chains and grocery union apparently making progress in their contract negotiations, the chances of a replay of the disastrous 141-day work stoppage in 2003-04 may be diminishing. After more than six months of negotiations between the United Food and Commercial Workers and Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons, differences on wages and pension issues reportedly have narrowed, though hurdles remain, especially on health insurance. For the workers, the risks of another walkout would be enormous. They lost big four years ago, and they have far fewer resources to draw on than the big chains. It's a classic David-and-Goliath situation, and Goliath does not seem to be in a generous mood.

Labor strife is fairly new to the Southern California grocery industry. Before 2003, the region's union contracts were among the best in the nation, providing pay and benefits that allowed non-college-educated workers to enjoy a decent standard of living, including excellent health insurance coverage. Today, however, the contracts in Southern California are among the worst in the country, with dramatically reduced health benefits and a two-tier wage and benefit structure that sharply divides longtime employees from newer ones.

The Associated Press
July 9, 2007

LOS ANGELES—Three major supermarket operators and their Southern California employees' union resumed negotiations for a new contract on Monday amid preparations by the union take a key step toward a possible strike.

The talks follow a recess since the July Fourth holiday. Since then, the United Food and Commercial Workers has begun mobilizing its membership to craft picket signs and stockpile supplies in the event of a strike.

Rick Icaza, president of the union's Local 770 in Los Angeles and one of the negotiators, has said the union will cancel the automatic, daily renewal of its members' current contract sometime this week. Such a move doesn't mean workers would be on strike, but it would clear the way for the union to order a walkout.

"Unless we do it, I don't think we're going to get any movement on the part of the employers," Icaza said Monday.

By Julia M. Scott
LA Daily News
July 3, 2007

Grocery negotiations recessed for the July Fourth holiday but workers said they would start making picket signs and stocking food banks in case of a strike, officials announced Tuesday.

Talks between Vons, Ralphs, and Albertson's and the United Food and Commercial Workers union will resume Monday, according to a federal mediator running the discussions.

Workers will prepare for the worst over the break by stockpiling picket signs and food for members at union headquarters across the region.

Employees will also learn what do to if there is a strike, lockout, contract extension or ratification vote.

"We're taking that time to ready ourselves in case they don't go so well next week," said union spokesman Mike Shimpock.

By Joshua Holland
AlterNet
July 3, 2007

Southern California grocery workers are poised for another round in their long and bitter battle with the three mega-chains -- Kroger, SuperValu and Safeway -- that dominate the market. Four years ago, ownership locked them out during a nasty contract dispute that dragged on for almost five months.

This time, their struggle will be televised -- by Brave News Films, the production company behind Wal-Mart: the High Costs of Low Prices. "When we learned that 20,000 California children had lost their health coverage under the contract the grocery workers agreed to in 2004, it made us angry in a very basic way," said Director Robert Greenwald. "As members of the community that care about these workers, we wanted to tell the story of their fight in human terms," he told reporters Monday. The result is a new film, Supermarket Swindle. [click here to view a video clip.] (Disclosure: Greenwald sits on the board of the Independent Media Institute, AlterNet's parent organization.)

The stories the film tells are increasingly common in the vaunted "new economy." The grocery workers say that they haven't had a raise in five years, and fewer and fewer have access to employer-paid healthcare and pensions. According to a study by researchers at UC Berkeley, 94 percent of grocery workers had employer-funded healthcare before the 2003 lock-out, but only 54 percent enjoy that coverage today. Owners claim they're feeling the squeeze from discount chains like Wal-Mart, which has moved into the grocery business with its heavily promoted and controversial "Supercenters" in the last two decades.

But if management is being squeezed, it's not showing up on their balance sheets, which are looking as healthy as ever. Nonetheless, workers are being asked to make concessions on pay and benefits so that the grocery chains can remain "competitive." They're the only ones being asked to tighten their belts; while the average employee at the three chains made $497 per week in 2006, the CEOs -- David Dillon of Kroger Supermarkets, Albertson's Jeff Noodle and Safeway's Steve Burd -- each pulled in an average of $174,068 per week.

By Gina Piccalo
Los Angeles Times
July 3, 2007

Filmmaker Robert Greenwald and his company Brave New Films on Monday launched a website featuring a series of videos that detail the hardships of Southern California grocery store workers. The launch of Supermarketswindle.com comes just as grocery worker union members in the region are considering a strike after cuts in pay and benefits.

"There is a David-versus-Goliath battle going on right now between the hard-working grocery store employees and the supermarket CEOs Jeffrey Noddle, David Dillon and Stephen Burd, who each make over $7 million a year," Greenwald said in a Monday statement. "This is a story that needs to be told now."

Interviews with three workers from Ralphs, Albertsons and Vons are the first in a series of worker testimonials Greenwald will post on the site. His efforts are part of a partnership with the Los Angeles Alliance, a pro-worker nonprofit group.

By Lou Hirsh
The Press-Enterprise
July 2, 2007

Grocery union supporters have teamed up with filmmaker Robert Greenwald, who took on retail giant Wal-Mart in a scathing 2005 documentary, in a bid to rally public opinion against the big-three grocery chains amid ongoing contract negotiations.

Experts say it's one sign that the United Food and Commercial Workers union has learned from the 2003-04 labor dispute and become more sophisticated on the public relations front. However, experts say, neither the union nor the grocers appear to have made a big impact on consumers during the stop-and-start talks of the past four months.

Daniel Mitchell, a professor of management and public policy at UCLA, said the United Food and Commercial Workers union has done a much better job this time around of coordinating communications of all the regional locals into one unified voice.