UFCW 324 Communications / News
California Supermarket Workers Locked Out During Dispute Seek Unemployment Benefits
February 12, 2007 · Wire Services
LOS ANGELES--Attorneys representing about 4,000 United Food and Commercial Worker members who worked at Albertson's Inc. asked a trial court in Los Angeles February 5 to overturn a state unemployment appeals board's decision that the workers were not entitled to unemployment benefits stemming from a 2003-2004 dispute (Tarkington v. Calif. Unemployment Ins. Appeals Bd., Cal. Super. Ct., No. BS107174, filed 2/5/07).
The move follows a similar appeal filed January 25 on behalf of about 4,000 employees of Ralphs Grocery Co. affected by the same dispute and denied unemployment benefits (Duran v. Calif. Unemployment Ins. Appeals Bd., Cal. Super. Ct., No. BS100719, filed 1/25/07).
The lawsuits, which come as talks begin on new contracts in Southern California's food industry, stem from a lockout of thousands of workers by Albertson's and Ralphs, a division of Ohio-based Kroger Co., during a four-and-a-half-month labor dispute that marked the last round of negotiations three years ago. The workers are seeking to recover unemployment payments that the state denied them at the time.
The appeal initially was filed in December 2005, covering some 8,000 UFCW members at Albertson's and Ralphs. But in December 2006, a state judge agreed with the supermarket chains that UFCW violated procedural requirements by suing both companies at once and tossed out the claims. As a result, the claims were refiled against the separate parties.
Workers Timely Filed Claims
The complaints seek to represent a class made up of all individuals who were employed at the two supermarket chains during the period from October 11, 2003, through February 26, 2004, and who filed timely unemployment claims with the California Employment Development Department but were denied the benefits.
The department denied those claims, and the California Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board upheld that decision, based on the "trade dispute exception" to Section 1262 of the state Unemployment Insurance Code, which allows for denial of unemployment benefits to workers who voluntarily leave work and stay away because of a trade dispute.
Plaintiffs' attorneys, however, argue that "under well-settled case law, there is no basis for disqualification under Section 1262 of the California Unemployment Insurance Code in situations, such as this one, in which the cause of unemployment was not the direct result of a trade dispute but rather resulted from the employers' own unlawful and egregious conduct."
Moreover, the workers' complaints assert that the appeals board acknowledged as much in its decision upholding the denial of benefits. "We note that if there were final [National Labor Relations Board] decisions holding that there were unfair labor practices committed by the employer during the trade dispute, the Appeals Board would have jurisdiction to determine if the illegal acts were a cause of the extension of the trade dispute and the claimants' unemployment," the appeals board said in its ruling.
In July 2006, Ralphs pleaded guilty to federal charges related to the illegal rehiring of UFCW workers during the strike/lockout.
Albertson's never was charged by the U.S. Attorney's Office, but plaintiffs argue that it too recruited and hired striking workers under false names and Social Security numbers.
An attorney with NLRB Region 31 stated on February 7 that it still has three open cases against Albertson's stemming from its activities during the 2003-04 strike/lockout.
Moreover, a case brought by the California Attorney General in February 2004, charging that an agreement among the supermarket chains to share revenues in the event of a strike against any one of them violated antitrust laws, is still pending in federal court in Los Angeles.
UFCW Local 770, which represents some 17,000 supermarket workers in Southern California, and is the largest of the seven locals in the region, announced that it was to begin contract talks with Ralphs on February 5.