Grocery labor talks echo issues of L.A., ...cuts in wages, health benefits

[Rose Siding]

Contract negotiations between major grocery chains and 30,000 union workers in Northern California are starting to bear a similarity to the protracted labor dispute that rocked Southern California earlier this year and resulted in a disastrous strike of 139 days.

Albertson's, Safeway and Kroger stores made a proposal to the union this week that contained many of the same demands that triggered the strike and lockout in the Los Angeles area. Primarily, the grocers want union workers to pay a greater share of spiraling health care costs, and they want to give new employees smaller benefits than existing employees receive. Although the proposals are tentative and subject to bargaining, the union shot back Tuesday, dismissing them as unfair.

Hope for a painless agreement between the two sides in Northern California, which have been negotiating for more than two months, is fading fast.
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"The proposals the company make here would really end what traditionally has been a middle-class job,'' Ron Lind, a spokesman for a coalition of eight Bay Area locals of the United Food and Commercial Workers, said Tuesday.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/11/24/MNGDHA0PPI1.DTL