Lockyer leads challenge to chains' mutual aid pact.

The mystery surrounding the major supermarket chains' secret mutual aid agreement continues, and the veil is not likely to be lifted soon.

Six months after its creation, three months after the chains admitted its existence and nearly two months after the document was grudgingly handed over to Bill Lockyer, the California attorney general in early February filed suit against the region's major supermarket chains, alleging that their agreement violates state and federal antitrust laws.

Still, state law prohibits Lockyer's office from disclosing materials received pursuant to an investigative subpoena, said Tom Dresslar, the attorney general's spokesman.

"The unions have tried to get copies in their own right but they haven't tried to get it out of us, as far as I know," he said.

Lockyer has been a vocal supporter of the UFCW, going so far as to walk the picket lines and speak at pro-union rallies outside supermarkets. Even so, Dresslar insists that Lockyer is not doing the union's bidding.

"The only people we're in cahoots with in this case are the shoppers in Southern California," he said. "We're representing their interests and nobody else's."

Nevertheless, some of the information could be valuable to the union cause. UFCW officials want to know the specifics of the revenue sharing agreement to better quantify the fiscal pain each chain is shouldering in the strike and lockout, which is well into its fourth month.

Lockyer filed suit in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles on Feb. 2, alleging that the mutual aid pact between Safeway Inc., Albertsons Inc. and Kroger Co. hurts customers by discouraging competitive pricing.

The chains were served with the 10-page complaint on Feb. 4 and have until Feb. 24 to respond. Only in the event of a trial can the agreement be released to the public.

The lawsuit did provide a few tidbits of the pact's contents. It includes Kroger's 101 regional Food 4 Less stores, for example. (Food 4 Less's contract with 5,700 area employees expires at the end of the month.) The suit also states that terms of the pact call for the distribution of any shared revenues to take place after a settlement with the unions is reached.

Labor analysts said revenue-sharing agreements typically contain a formula derived by the percentage of market share each chain held in the region before the picket lines began. They don't usually entail the sharing of profits, although they may factor in strike- and lockout-related expenses such as additional security, travel or advertising costs, or the cost of training replacement workers.

The grocers' agreement that a strike against one chain would be followed by the lockout of employees at the others was also part of the deal.

"It sounds like they are sharing the burden of the labor dispute to get to where they want to be," said Mark Theodore, a partner advising management in the Los Angeles office of law firm Proskauer Rose LLP.

Terry O'Neil, a spokesman for Ralphs, refused to comment on the pact other than to acknowledge it exists.

Whatever information does come out could influence bargaining.

Union leaders, for instance, have largely refused to divulge how much money they have in their strike funds or how much financial assistance they have received from other union groups. They have also been reluctant to discuss the number of Vons and Pavilions workers who have crossed picket lines and returned to work.

Mutual aid agreements have been used numerous times, most notably by the airlines in the 1960s and 1970s. Lockyer's lawsuit is looked upon as a long shot.

"If chains were to try and keep (other) competition out through means of a collective bargaining agreement, that would clearly raise a lot of antitrust concerns because you are dealing in the product market rather than the labor market," said Daniel Mitchell, a UCLA professor of management and public policy. "But this is labor market stuff."

Dresslar said Lockyer would press on regardless of the outcome of negotiations, which resumed Feb. 11 under the guidance of federal mediator Peter Hurtgen.

"If they broke the law, they broke the law," said Dresslar. "If they settle with the union, that doesn't mean our antitrust action is going to go away."