Supermarkets

The 7 a.m. sun gleams off the windows of this East Harlem bodega, as its owner, Julio Pimentel, unlocks the door and steps behind the counter that separates him from customers. He switches on a fan and tunes the radio to a Spanish station, and merengue awakens the humid morning. It is Friday, Aug. 1. Rent is due, and Pimentel does not know if he can pay. He spends $3,300 a month to lease the bodega. When he took over the small grocery eight years ago, monthly rent cost $1,500.

I love grocery coupons. And I hate them. I love saving money and getting a deal that someone else isn't getting. There's nothing like standing in line at the store and hearing the groans from other shoppers when you pull out a big wad of paper, followed by the gasps when the checker knocks $20 or $50 off your tab. But the time it takes to cut out coupons is a drag, as is the time it takes to prowl around online to find even more coupons.

Supermarket prices for 16 basic food items surged to a record in the third quarter because of higher commodity costs and increased processing and transportation expenses, the American Farm Bureau Federation said Thursday. The average cost of typical weekly consumer purchases rose 11% to $48.68 in the three months ended Sept. 30, from $44.03 a year earlier, the federation said. Costs rose 4.3% from the second quarter.

The U.S. Supreme Court asked the Justice Department on Monday for advice on a bid by the nation's largest grocery chains to block customers from suing over violations of government food-labeling rules. Supermarkets led by Supervalu Inc., Safeway Inc. and Kroger Co. contend that only government regulators, and not customers, can enforce federal and state labeling laws. The companies are seeking to stop a suit accusing them of concealing that salmon they sold contained artificial coloring.

Five years ago, the union representing Southern California supermarket workers was a mess. The union locals were nearly bankrupt, members were quitting by the thousands, and the workers had just swallowed some of the biggest concessions ever in the recent Southern California labor movement. The 141-day strike and lockout that ended in 2004 turned grocery shopping into chaos, frustrated shoppers and brought the United Food and Commercial Workers union to its knees.

Teri Gault stops in her tracks in the personal care aisle at Ralphs when she learns someone has never heard of a BOGO. "How about peelies or blinkies?" she asks, with disbelief. "Catalinas?" A look of urgency passes across her face: "You don't throw your Catalinas away, do you?" Gault is the Santa Clarita-based creator of the Grocery Game ( www.thegrocerygame.com), an online service that helps members strategically navigate the world of supermarket sales.

The California Grocers Assn.'s challenge to a law that makes it harder to fire supermarket employees will go to trial, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Ralph Dau ruled Friday. The group sued the city of Los Angeles last year over a grocery "worker retention" ordinance, which limits a new company's ability to replace a previous owner's employees for at least three months.

The battle over banning grocery sales at big box stores in Long Beach will now be fought at the polls and could cost the state's fifth-largest city hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Long Beach City Council voted in September to ban grocery sales at stores larger than 100,000 square feet, including Wal-Mart, even though the discount retailer had no plans for a so-called Supercenter in the city.

A labor agreement this week between supermarket chain Stater Bros. and unionized workers threatens the two-tier wage system at the heart of a bitter labor dispute that crippled the Southern California grocery industry three years ago. Stater and the United Food and Commercial Workers union declined to provide details of the contract, pending a vote Wednesday by 14,000 Stater employees. But people familiar with the agreement said it would end the tiered wage scale and improve health benefits.

Members of six union locals that represent more than 13,000 employees of Stater Bros. approved a three-year contract with the grocer, the union said Thursday. The United Food and Commercial Workers plans to use the pact as a model for talks with three larger grocery chains in Southern and Central California that were involved in a 4 1/2 -month strike and lockout three years ago.