WORKERS VOTE TO APPROVE GROCERY PACT.

Byline: JULIA M. SCOTT

Staff Writer

Preliminary results show grocery workers across Southern California overwhelmingly approved a new contract Sunday, avoiding a repeat of the prolonged supermarket strike of 2003-04.

The four-year contract with Vons, Ralphs and Albertson's includes retroactive raises, improved health benefits and the end of a two-tier seniority system.

Support for the new contract "was really powerful," said Rick Icaza, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 770, after announcing preliminary results. "It even shocks me."

Nearly 70,000 members were eligible to vote across the region. Polls in Burbank, Palmdale, Harbor City and Montebello were open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The contract required a simple majority to pass.

"We are pleased at the early indication that the contract settlement has been ratified," said Naomi Goldman, a spokeswomen for the three chains.

At the Pickwick Center in Burbank on Sunday, hundreds of workers discussed the terms of the deal with union representatives and other grocery employees. Small boxes collected simple paper ballots asking workers to check either yes or no.

Armando Avila, who stocks the shelves at Vons in Mission Hills, said he was satisfied with the contract and hoped it would pass.

"After our last experience, I'm very happy with what we got," said Avila, who has worked at Vons for 29 years and remembers the 4 1/2-month strike in 2003 and 2004. "It could have gone the other way."

Maria Bugarin, who has worked at Vons in West Hills for 10 years, was relieved bargaining ended with the contract she held in her lap.

Bugarin believes the union got a good contract because of the two strike authorization votes that gave leaders the ability to call a strike at a moment's notice.

"I think we all got together and said we were going to strike," Bugarin said.

But not everybody was happy with the new deal.

Chris Henry, who stocks the liquor shelves at a Ralphs in Van Nuys, was dismayed that new hires would start at $7.55 an hour, when he started at $6.45 in 1991. He wanted a pay hike larger than the $1.35 hourly raise he will receive over the next four years under the new contract and planned to vote against the agreement.

"They have people coming in the door six months and are earning as much as I am, and they are telling me this is a deal?" Henry said as workers discussed the contract around him.

The contract gives raises of more than $4 per hour over the next four years to the most senior meat cutters, according to information released by the union, Newer employees at the bottom of the wage scale will get a 95-cent raise over the next four years. The raises are retroactive to March 5, when the original contract expired.

julia.scott(at)dailynews.com

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Photo:

Maria Bugarin of Van Nuys listens to a union leader in Burbank explain the new contract as she holds on to her grandson Julio, 10, while 10-month-old Gabriel plays beside her.

Ernesto Elizarraraz/Special to the Daily News