Southern California Heats Up

Negotiations between the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and the major grocery chains in Southern California just got a lot more contentious:

Albertson's employees voted "overwhelmingly" to give their union leaders the authority to call a strike at some future date, a union spokesman said Monday.

Under the current contract extension between the United Food and Commercial Workers union and Albertsons, no strike could occur before April 9.

Mike Shimpock, a UFCW spokesman, said union leaders won't call a strike against Albertsons until after the supermarket chain has presented its "last and best" offer to the union.

"We don't want to strike," Shimpock said. "If negotiations are progressing, we will take whatever measures necessary to get that contract," he said.

After April 9, the current contract extension will renew automatically each day unless one side requests that it be canceled, in which case the contract would terminate 72 hours after the request is made, Shimpock said.

Three years ago Southern California was the location of one of the largest strikes in US history.  The employees struck and were locked-out for almost 5 months, and in the end the employers won that strike.  It cost them billions of dollars in profits, but they did it, and imposed one of the worst contracts ever. 

This time around however, UFCW grocery employees along the entire West Coast are negotiating contracts.  This time workers understand that these are national chains, and that an injury to one is an injury to all.

tags: ufcw  workers  california  albertsons  

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