UFCW, SEIU to Demonstrate in So. Calif.

ELLIOT ZWIEBACH

LOS ANGELES — Members of seven Southern California locals of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union are scheduled to hold demonstrations at the local corporate offices of Albertsons, Ralphs and Vons Tuesday as the union seeks to pressure the three employers during contract negotiations.

In a related action, members of the Service Employees International Union were scheduled to picket at a Ralphs store in Inglewood late Monday in support of the UFCW — "to show SEIU members and family will not cross any picket lines should the chains lock out or be struck by the clerks," according to published reports.

Tuesday's scheduled demonstrations at the Albertsons office in Fullerton and the Vons office in Arcadia are expected to include speeches by UFCW members, community leaders and local clergy; in addition, the participants said they plan to deliver letters to executives at both companies urging them to negotiate a contract "that enables workers to raise their families with their middle-class neighbors, not on the backs of middle-class taxpayers."

The action outside the Ralphs office will be limited, because of lack of parking there in an industrial section of Compton, to a display of banners readable from the adjacent freeway, a UFCW representative told SN.

The primary issue in the talks, which have been ongoing since February, is health care, with the UFCW saying the two sides are attempting to resolve a difference of $1.23 per hour per employee.