Work stoppage enters 3rd day; company spox: ‘All in the together’

By Donna Beth Weilenman
Staff Reporter

For the first time since the company was founded in 1935 in Placerville, Raley’s Supermarkets, including the one at Southampton Shopping Center in Benicia, is being picketed by its union employees.

After more than a year of negotiations that included the involvement of a federal mediator, the company issued what it called its final offer. Beginning Sunday morning, members of the Unified Food and Commercial Workers Union walked off the job and began carrying picket signs.

Benicia’s store was open Monday as usual, and customers were shopping during the strike. Store management declined to talk about the situation.

The two sides are in agreement with the company’s recent wage offer, which Raley’s said is an extension of previous salary rates and which union members have characterized as a wage freeze.

Neither company nor union workers want the strike to last long.

But striking workers said Monday they’re unhappy with the proposed benefits package. Company officials, meanwhile, said Raley’s wants its employees to vote on its offer, but that the union isn’t allowing that to happen.

Curtis Frolich, assistant manager of the Benicia Raley’s meat department, said he went home Saturday after working a 10-hour day and found a letter from Raley’s that said if he wanted to continue working at the store, he needed to sign a letter of resignation with the union.

“Everybody in the union got one. I couldn’t believe it,” he said.

He joined other workers in picketing the Southampton store. “We’re OK with the wage freeze,” he said. “All we want to do is keep what we have.”

He said he viewed the company’s final offer as a “to-heck-with-you-guys” message.

He said the company wants union employees to increase their out-of-pocket expenses for health services, and said the latest offer would reduce holiday and Sunday compensation.

“They’ve done it to the non-union people, and they’re not happy about it,” he said.

Ironically, Frolich said, he sought employment at the store 12 years ago — he’s worked in the industry 30 years — because it had never had a strike.

He said he also liked that it is a family-operated company. “It felt like family,” he said, though that has changed in recent years.

“I never thought I’d be in this situation,” he said.

“You have to stand up for your rights,” or else “you may as well work at Wal-Mart, where there’s no representation.”

Nick Smith, a meat cutter, said in Benicia his department is union-represented, but the grocery side — those working in such places as produce and at cash registers — are non-union.

He said the proposed changes would cost him the equivalent of $50 to $100 a week in increased medical costs and loss of extra compensation for working Sundays and holidays. But he needs the benefits for himself and the daughter he supports.

“I joined this company seven years ago for the medical. Raley’s has been good for medical benefits. It’s something we’ve been working for.”

The company’s final offer also would affect his prospective promotion, he said. He’s currently two months from becoming a journeyman meat cutter, but under the proposed contract, he said, it would take two years before he’d achieve that rank.

Tim Bartee works occasionally at Raley’s to fill in for other employees when they’re on vacation. He spent 47 years in the industry before retiring in 2000.

Monday, however, he was carrying a sign in support of the union employees. Like his fellow picketers, he said the stalemate is about medical costs.

“They want to add the cost to employees,” Bartee said. “They want to eliminate all but one of the meat cutters in the department, and make the rest of them take a sales clerk job.”

He said clerks are paid less than meat cutters, $12 an hour compared to $21 an hour. “It’s a matter of holding on to security for the meat cutters,” he said.

The three acknowledged the company’s position that it is losing business to such outlets as Wal-Mart, Target, Whole Foods, Nugget and other stores that are viewed as having lower costs.

But they argued that the company shouldn’t be cutting its costs at the expense of employees.

John Segale, Raley’s communication specialist, said the letter union employees received was an advisory that explained what workers need to do if they wanted to stay in the union or cross the picket line and work in the store.

“It’s an approved course of action,” he said.

He said the company’s “last, final offer” didn’t change the employees’ health and welfare.

The problem, he said, is that the employees have neither reviewed nor voted on the company’s offer. If employees approve the offer, he said, “then we have a contract.” If they vote against it, “it’s a clear signal,” and the company would propose another offer.

“It’s critical they have a chance to vote on the contract,” Segale said. “It’s up to them.”

He said the company has about 13,000 employees, of which 7,500 are represented by a union. The company has 120 stores, mostly in California, though some are in Nevada. This is the first strike in the company’s history. No store has been closed.

Some employees have crossed the picket line, and others have been brought in to maintain service. Segale said the company also has taken measures to make sure customers feel comfortable going to stores, but he said there are no figures yet that reflect the strike’s impact on business.

He acknowledged that some union picketers are encouraging customers to other stores, but some of those, he noted, are nonunion. “That doesn’t help,” he said.

He said that since the company’s last contract with USCW workers, signed in 2008, 240 nonunion stores have opened in competition to the Raley’s company, including Nob Hill and Bel Air supermarkets. Nob Hill union workers also are striking; Bel Air employees were not picketing early in the strike.

Segale said union workers are being asked to share in the company’s cost-cutting measures, just as the nonunion workers have done. “It’s not fair for them to be treated differently. We’re all in this together.”