Just a day after agreeing to extend contract talks for three weeks, the union that represents 65,000 Southern California grocery workers targeted Albertsons for a strike vote Sunday.
Union officials say that despite the extension, negotiations are moving at a "glacial pace" and they need leverage to reach an agreement with Albertsons, Vons and Ralphs, the region's largest supermarket chains.
"Our Albertsons members are strong and committed and this will give us the traction we need to finally get these talks moving," said Greg Conger, president of United Food and Commercial Workers union Local 324 in Buena Park.
The Albertsons workers will be asked to vote on whether to authorize a strike at some future date. Albertsons has 22,000 UFCW workers at 249 stores in the region.
The union may ask for similar votes against Ralphs and Vons at a later date.
Last year, union officials said Albertsons was the most likely first target of any separate action because the level of debt at Supervalu Inc., its corporate parent, made it less able to withstand a strike.
Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Supervalu borrowed $6.1 billion last year to purchase Albertsons and its non-union sibling, Bristol Farms.
"Nobody wins in a strike. Not the companies, not our employees and not our customers," Albertsons said in a statement. "We believe it is irresponsible to frighten our employees and alarm our customers with a strike vote when we should be continuing to work together at the bargaining table."
But such a vote is the first indication that the current round of talks could degenerate into the type of 4 1/2-month strike and lockout that created grocery-shopping chaos in late 2003.
The UFCW announced its planned strike vote on the same day when a panel of clergy and civic leaders lambasted the grocery companies for offering low wages and poor health benefits.
The labor-backed group, which calls itself the Blue Ribbon Commission on L.A.'s Grocery Industry and Community Health, also said the chains had done little to improve grocery shopping in poor neighborhoods, despite pledges to build stores in low-income communities after the 1992 riots.
"What we found is shocking, both in terms of the crisis in healthcare and the state of the stores in underserved areas," wrote Bishop Jon Bruno of the Episcopal Church of Los Angeles and Rabbi Mark Diamond, executive vice president of the Southern California Board of Rabbis, in a report issued by the group.
