Grocery Workers Take to the Picket Lines
October 13, 2003
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Union workers at 44 Kroger stores in West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky voted Monday to strike after rejecting the company's contract offer. They joined about 70,000 grocery workers in Southern California who began a strike over the weekend over contract talks.
More than 2,000 members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 approved the strike Monday morning at a meeting in Charleston, more than the two-thirds majority required to authorize a strike, said Local 400 President Jim Lowther.
The union represents about 3,300 workers for the Cincinnati-based chain in 37 stores in West Virginia, five in Ohio and two in Kentucky. The Ohio stores are in Belpre, Gallipolis, Marietta, Pomeroy and Proctorville.
"The proposal doesn't provide enough money to pay for our benefits. They ought to be providing for the families that helped earn that money," Lowther said.
"We ain't asking for all of it, just a fair shake," said Randy Atkins, who works at a Kroger in Charleston. Atkins commutes 100 miles daily roundtrip from his home in Oak Hill to the store.
Union members planned to set up picket lines at 10 p.m. Monday.
Twenty stores normally close at midnight. A Kroger spokesman said the company planned to close all 44 stores at midnight Monday and keep them closed.
"Kroger will not operate those 44 stores for the duration of the work stoppage, although store pharmacies will remain open so the customers can have their prescriptions filled," said Archie Fralin, a spokesman for Kroger's mid-Atlantic region in Roanoke, Va.
In California, three major supermarket chains said Sunday they plan to hire temporary workers to keep hundreds of stores open.
Clerks at Kroger's Ralphs, Safeway's Vons and Albertsons grocery stores went on strike late Saturday after negotiations between union representatives and store officials broke off, with health care coverage a key sticking point.
The companies operate about 900 stores from San Diego to Santa Barbara and control 60% of the Southern California market.
Officials with the United Food and Commercial Workers union initially said strikers would only target Vons stores and urged the companies not to lock out workers from the others.
The supermarkets, however, said a strike against one company would be considered a strike against all three. In a joint statement, they said Albertsons and Ralphs would lock out employees during the dispute.
Plans were in the works to "ensure that stores remain open and staffed," the statement said. Sandra Calderon, a spokeswoman for Vons, said those plans include using temporary workers.
Pete Williams, president of Kroger's Mid-Atlantic region, wrote a letter to employees over the weekend saying the company offers generous benefits compared to non-union grocers like Wal-Mart "who want our business and want your jobs."
Wal-Mart is also a fear in California. Besides being the world's largest company, it has expanded to become the biggest player in the fiercely competitive $680 billion U.S. grocery industry it joined only a decade ago. Wal-Mart is a non-union shop.
Wal-Mart's massive scale has let it extract better terms from suppliers, widening the cost advantage between itself and traditional outlets like Kroger, Albertsons and Safeway.
Although Wal-Mart does not have grocery operations in Southern California, the company has announced plans to open about 40 hybrid grocery and general merchandise Supercenters in in the next several years.
Even after that expansion, Wal-Mart would control only about 1% of the region's grocery market, a union spokeswoman said.
Contributing: Reuters
http://usatoday.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&expire=&urlID=7907422&fb=Y&partnerID=1661