Cops, bus drivers and grocery store clerks fight back
Inconvenienced, irritated and stuck in traffic, Santa Monicans on Wednesday dealt with another day of labor strikes.
It was the fourth day of picketing in front of local grocery stores and the second day that Los Angeles buses didn’t run. In a separate dispute, many of the LA County sheriff’s deputies who work at the Santa Monica Courthouse called in sick, temporarily shutting down the building.
All three groups are demanding better contracts and say they won’t rest until labor negotiations bear fruit. But resolutions may take weeks to reach, officials warned.
Though some Santa Monicans broke down Wednesday and crossed the picket lines, most appeared to be respecting the wishes of local grocery store workers, who carried signs asking shoppers to turn around.
Meanwhile, non-unionized Santa Monica grocery stores such as Co-opportunity and Whole Foods Market were jam-packed with shoppers, who clogged up parking lots and kept full the metered spaces out front.
Aung Min, a manager at Co-opportunity, at 16th Street and Broadway, said sales have jumped by 15 percent since workers at other grocery stores began their strike on Sunday at 12 a.m.
Protest: 24/7
A handful of picketers at Vons at Broadway and Lincoln Boulevard asked customers to “please shop elsewhere” while passing motorists honked and waved in support of the striking workers.
Tom Hancock, of West LA, a checker at the store for the past eight years, said workers are picketing around the clock, despite that the store has shortened its usual hours — 6 a.m. to 1 a.m. — to 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
Though some shoppers have complained that picketers are rude and confrontational, Hancock said those aren’t tactics his group has employed. “We’re being pretty mellow, because, you know, you catch more flies with honey,” he said.
Inside, manager Brian Loudermilk wouldn’t comment except to say, “It’s slow man, that’s all I can say.”
Shopper Jeanette Clark, a semi-retired administrator who since 1976 has lived just four blocks from the store, said she had no choice but to break the picket lines.
3FC,“This is my first time (shopping since the strike began),” she said. “I don’t have a car and the bus is on strike. I’ve gotta have stuff, you know.”
Clark said she saw one of the clerks that has served her for years picketing out front.
“I felt really bad,” Clark said. “She’s always so jovial and she was really down. So that was hard.”
But while some Santa Monicans decided to cross the picket lines, even those that observed them said the strikes have had an impact on their daily routines.
While waiting for the Big Blue Bus, whose workers are not on strike, Whole Foods shopper Albertyne Ashforth, a retired legal secretary waiting for the No. 2 bus, said, “It’s made the traffic worse and the buses more crowded.”
No end in sight
All told, labor unrest caused anguish across Southern California as contract bus drivers walked off the job in solidarity with striking Metropolitan Transit Authority workers and two courthouses were temporarily closed as the result of a separate dispute with sheriff’s deputies.
About 70,000 grocery clerks from three chains spent their fourth day on picket lines in the southern and central parts of California with no sign of a new contract. Grocery workers in four other states — West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, California and Missouri — are also on strike.
There was little optimism that the grocery and transit strikes would be resolved any time soon.
“Those in both disputes are digging in their heels. And the common thread here is health benefits,” said Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. “The MTA and grocery strikes will be long ones.”
Rich Cowan, secretary and treasurer for United Food and Commercial Workers Local Union 1442, which represents 5,000 grocery store workers in area beach cities, said business at Vons, Albertsons and Pavilions is down by as much as 50 percent at some outlets.
Cowan initially said strikers would only target Vons and urged the companies not to lock out workers from the other stores. But picket lines sprung up at Ralphs and Albertsons after the chains said a strike against one company would be considered a strike against all three and began locking out employees. About 3,800 workers are affected in the local union, which has its headquarters in Santa Monica on Second Street.
“The picket lines are going well and people are shopping elsewhere,” he said. “When this all started we wanted to target Vons only... we wanted to give people an option but they created this holy alliance.”
Officials from Vons didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment.
Sheriff’s call in sick
Nearly half of the 427 LA County sheriff’s deputies who work at jails and transport prisoners to court called in sick Wednesday, temporarily closing the Santa Monica and Beverly Hills courthouses, said Deputy Johnie Jones. Deputies have been protesting stalled labor talks with sporadic sick-outs over the past three weeks, and many jails were on lockdown.
The Santa Monica Courthouse stayed closed for two hours on Wednesday morning while deputies were brought in from Van Nuys. Hundreds of people lined up outside waiting to get in. The doors finally swung open at about 10 a.m.
The Santa Monica Police Department had taken steps to compensate in the event that the courthouse would be closed for longer.
“We worked closely with the courts when we got notification of the sick-out,” said SMPD Lt. Frank Fabrega, adding a court judge would’ve come to the jail to hold the hearings. “We had contingency plans to hold arraignments at the jail facility.”
Assistant Sheriff R. Doyle Campbell said the department would begin suspending deputies who did not show up for work.
Feeling the pain
The three labor disputes have created a spate of problems across the region: Hundreds of thousands of commuters are stranded. Freeways are clogged. Grocery stores are scaling back hours. And the already ailing economy has taken a hit.
“Yesterday I couldn’t get to work,” Ginara Santay, 44, said as she waited for a ride Wednesday morning. Santay usually takes buses to four different house-cleaning jobs each week.
6AF,“Tomorrow I have no idea how I will get to work. I have an 8-year-old son. I’m worried about the rent. I can’t afford to miss one day, and I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
The strike against the MTA began Tuesday when mechanics walked off the job in a dispute over health benefits and other issues, shutting down the nation’s third-largest mass-transit system.
Some 2,000 MTA mechanics walked out, with another 6,000 bus drivers and clerks honoring the mechanics’ picket lines. On Wednesday, 250 employees of the company First Transit joined the strike. MTA had contracted the company to cover some routes. Santa Monica’s Big Blue Bus line picked up some of the slack for their striking colleagues, carrying heavier loads and expanding its service.
Cowan said it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Grocery store executives aren’t budging and neither are union workers.
“It’s a few people at the top and you can’t communicate with them,” he said. “We would like to go back to negotiations and talks right away.
“This is tough in many ways,” he added. “They are losing money now and they have created this animosity and they are going to have a hard time getting customers back that they’ve lost.”
But some shoppers Wednesday said whatever price they have to pay is worth it to support workers in their quest for better benefits.
“It’s hard, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do,” said Gino Black, a Whole Foods shopper visiting Santa Monica from Maryland.
(The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
Jeanette Clark
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 16, 2003. Read the original PDF.