Local labor leaders Monday criticized key elements of the recent Southern California grocery strike settlement and said they will continue to prepare for a possible strike this summer.
Some experts speculated that the concessions made by labor groups in the Southern California dispute could avert a strike in the north if unions were forced to accept a similar deal.
But a top Sacramento union official criticized Monday a two-tier wage scale that was included in the Southern California agreement, giving new workers lower pay and benefits. It "is something we're going to resist," said Jacques Loveall, executive vice president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 588, the largest local in Northern California with 30,000 members.
"That's going to create a lot of morale problems," he said. "The solution is not to lower the wages and benefits."
At the same time, union officials from the Central Valley and greater Bay Area are continuing to build support from community and political leaders to pressure supermarket executives to settle upcoming contracts swiftly and avoid a bitter, costly dispute such as the one that lasted five months in Southern California.
Other labor groups and the AFL-CIO, which joined with the grocery unions in Southern California, expect to work more closely with local unions and step in more quickly to pressure supermarket chains to reach agreements this summer.
"In the next few weeks, the Northern California grocery workers will start meeting. We'll definitely be involved," said J.B. Tengco, spokesman for the California Labor Federation. "We will continue to ramp up and build on community and statewide support." That strategy could include a statewide boycott of the supermarket chains - a move labor threatened to take if the Southern California dispute wasn't settled by the end of last week.
In the Central Valley, a contract for 21,000 supermarket employees expires July 17 - although one for Bel Air workers in the Sacramento area ends in September. A separate contract covering 40,000 Bay Area grocery store workers expires Sept. 11.
Under the new three-year Southern California contract, longtime workers will receive - in lieu of pay raises - two lump-sum annual bonuses for the next two years - roughly $500 for an employee who works 32 hours a week. New hires would be paid a lower pay rate - about $2 a hour less compared to the top hourly wage paid to veteran clerks.
For current employees, health care coverage will continue to be paid by the employer for the first two years. Clerks would have to pay up to $5 a week for individual coverage and $15 a week for family benefits thereafter if company contributions aren't enough to cover costs.
New hires would receive a smaller company contribution.
Locally, supermarket clerks don't make contributions toward health care coverage. They do have co-payments for visits to the doctor.
Labor experts say the Southern California accord will serve as a road map for talks with other supermarket unions this year. However, it won't be rubber-stamped elsewhere, they say.
"There is nothing automatic in subsequent negotiations. Here the unions don't have to necessarily accept what happened in different areas," said Harley Shaiken, a University of California, Berkeley, professor who specializes in labor issues.
Still, the major supermarket chains expect to come in with a similar tough stand on controlling costs by proposing cuts in health care benefits and lower pay and benefits for new hires.
"It will be clearly in the unions' interest to begin preparations immediately," said Kent Wong, director of the Center for Labor Research and Education at the University of California, Los Angeles. "They just didn't anticipate the hardball style that the supermarket industry would adopt (in Southern California)."
The five-month strike idled 59,000 grocery clerks at more than 850 stores owned by Safeway Inc., Albertsons Inc. and Kroger Co. Executives argued they needed to slash costs to remain competitive, especially with the emergence of nonunion retailers like Wal-Mart, now the nation's largest grocer.
But the strike and lockout came at a steep price for workers and the supermarket chains, which lost an estimated $2 billion in sales during the dispute. The chains now must win back countless customers who avoided the picket lines and shopped at independent supermarkets, warehouse stores and specialty food outlets.
"It was a very painful and costly campaign. Neither side wants to repeat what happened in Southern California," Wong said. In Northern California, though, it's a new battleground with a different set of workers in different marketplace.
Brian Dowling, a Safeway spokesman, declined to discuss future negotiations.
"Every market stands on its own. Every labor negotiation and contract is unique," Dowling said. "The competitive elements are different by markets. When we talk about the idea of restructuring the labor contract the formula is decidedly different by market."
Loveall said the union is talking with supermarket companies about ways to keep a lid on rising health care costs. "We're meeting with employers. We would try to seek solutions to the health care cost problems without necessarily embracing that two-tier (wage) system," Loveall said.
