> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Grocery store workers stand tall for benefits - URL: https://www.smdp.com/grocery-store-workers-stand-tall-for-benefits/ - Published: 2003-11-06T16:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-23T03:10:02.000Z - Author: Guest Author - Tags: Business, Ocean Park, #archive-import *Influx of shoppers doesn’t deter picketers* *By JAMIE WETHERBE Special to the Daily Press* Dennis Brown works at Albertsons in Santa Monica but he can’t afford to live here. As a full-time food worker, Brown makes about $31,000 a year. He commutes 25 miles from his home in Lomita to the Albertsons on Lincoln and Ocean Park boulevards. His wife, a bookkeeper at Ralphs, has been locked out, said Brown, a picket captain and veteran worker standing in front of the Albertsons in Ocean Park. Brown said he wouldn’t be picketing if the supermarket chains’ new contract offered workers a health care plan they could afford. Instead, the supermarkets are asking all employees to pay a premium regardless of their position or pay scale. “We (full-time employees) already know we have to help out with premiums,” Brown said. “We can deal with the increase.” But Brown said the part-time workers can’t afford the hike in health care costs, which could be between $15 and $40 a week, depending on who you ask. As the strike now enters its fourth week, contract negotiations have broken off between union officials and the supermarket chains, primarily because the markets want to increase workers’ health care costs and decrease their pension benefits, as well as lower new hires’ wages and benefits. Supermarket officials cite the slow economy, the rising cost of health care and the need to stay competitive with non-union companies like Wal-Mart, for not giving workers what they want. The 850 Vons, Ralphs, Pavilions and Albertsons stores affected by the strike are losing a combined $131 million every week, according to a recent report by Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst Mark Husson. While picketers on Friday left their posts in front of all 300 Ralphs stores, it doesn’t change the labor dispute, said Richard Cowan, secretary and treasurer of the Unified Food and Commercial Workers Union in Santa Monica. Picketers instead are focusing on Vons and Albertsons, and asking shoppers to go elsewhere — sending them to locally owned stores and to Ralphs. “We wanted to give (the public) a place to shop,” Cowan said. Since the picketers left, the Ralphs in Santa Monica has seen a sharp increase in business, according to a manager there. About 70,000 union workers in Southern and Central California have been affected by strike, and about 75 percent are part-time employees, according to union officials. Current part-time food clerks earn between the state’s minimum wage of $6.75 an hour and about $12 an hour. Many have second jobs but have stayed in the food industry because of the “very good health plan,” Cowan said. Under the current contract, workers with health-care benefits have an average of a $15 co-pay for doctor visits and prescriptions, Cowan said, adding no premium pay is required for individual or family coverage. Grocery store workers are prepared to pay up to a $25 co-pay for a doctor’s visit and $25 or more for prescriptions, Cowan said. As for the full-time food clerks in Southern California, the current contract puts the top pay at $17.90 an hour. Under the new contract proposed by the supermarkets, new hires could only earn up to a maximum of $15 an hour, and it could take them as many as 12 years before they reach the top income bracket, Cowan said. With contract changes, retirees could pay up to $200 a month for medical and dental coverage, and that could increase to $400 a month with one prescription for specific ailments like heart conditions. In the first year, the new contract asks workers to pay about $40 a week for family coverage, but that number could be as much as $95 a week by the third year, Cowan said. “Almost everything (in the new contract) is aimed at eliminating food clerk jobs,” Cowan said. “The whole thing is,... ‘here comes Wal-Mart.’” But of course, supermarket officials disagree with the union’s logic. “I’m not quite sure where they’re getting their figures from,” said Albertsons’ spokeswoman Stacia Levenfeld, adding that under the new contract, health care would cost employees $5 a week for individual coverage or $10 to $15 a week for family coverage. “I think everyone’s aware of the fact that health care has skyrocketed,” Levenfeld said, adding this is the first time Albertsons has asked employees to chip in for premiums. Currently 92 percent of Americans share in the cost of premiums, Levenfeld said, and Albertsons has always offered a “very generous” health care plan. For now Cowan said people running picket lines are making almost $300 a week, while picketers earn about $20 a day, adding that he has no clue when negotiation talks will continue. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/110603-02_01.jpg) Strikers in front of the Albertsons at Lincoln and Ocean Park boulevards are now in their fourth week off the job. (Photo: John Wood/Daily Press) *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 6, 2003.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/110603.pdf?ref=smdp.com)