Grocery workers voted Monday to approve a new union contract that covers employees at nearly 100 San Diego County stores.

The three-year agreement approves modest raises, keeps current health care plans in place and gives employees longer notice about work schedules, the United Food & Commercial Workers union said.

Union officials said Monday night that the workers had voted by a wide margin to approve the new contract, although they said a final tally would not be available until later in the week.

The deal affects roughly 47,000 workers in Southern California, including 10,000 in San Diego County, at Ralphs and Albertsons, which also operates Vons, Pavilions and Safeway stores.


Negotiators for the union and the grocery chains reached a tentative agreement last week. Workers had approved a strike authorization in June, and had protested outside several stores.

“The companies need to know members are strong,” Mickey Kasparian, Local 135 union president, said Monday morning after workers began voting.

The deal came at a time of increased competition in the Southern California grocery market, led by a crop of new competitors that gobbled up 39 vacant stores left by the bankruptcies of Fresh & Easy and Haggen.

“The three-year agreement acknowledges the important contributions of our front-line employees, our most valuable asset, and allows our company to remain competitive,” said Carlos Illingworth, Albertsons and Vons spokesman.


Ralphs said it sought an agreement that was good for workers and kept it competitive in the market.

The new agreement shortens the time new hires need to work to be eligible for a raise by 400 hours. It also gives workers a roughly 85-cent-an-hour raise, although that amount may be higher or lower across its 15 job levels. Wage increases are retroactive to when contract negotiations began in March.

The UFCW said the grocery chains are paying nearly $5 an hour for health care and more than $2 in retirement benefits for each employee per hour.

Another change is workers will get a one-week notice of their shifts, as opposed to 72 hours now.


A shadow over negotiations was the union’s historically long 141-day strike in 2003-2004. Some experts attributed the strike to permanently driving shoppers away from the traditional grocers to alternative stores, like Trader Joe’s and Costco.

Grocery clerk Jose Valdez, 45, said Monday morning outside the Scottish Rite Event Center after voting on the contract that he was glad not to have another drawn-out strike.

“It was bad, man. Stressful,” he said of the last strike. “I’m glad we got a contract.”

Burt Flickinger, managing director of retail consulting firm Strategic Resource Group, said the grocery chains made a good move approving the agreement with the union because higher wages means better workers.


“The level of service is very good, especially with the more experienced workers,” he said. “... Lower-compensated workers tend to work at Walmart and other discounters where there is much more turnover. There tends to be more shopper dissatisfaction.”

Flickinger said long-term workers who are on a first-name basis with shoppers could be what saves the chains from eroding market share — now about 35 percent in Southern California.

The longer notice on schedules, not always common in the grocery business, is helpful for many of the employees working their way through high school or community college, he said.

Vons is the dominant grocery store in San Diego County with 46 locations. Albertsons has 25 locations and Ralphs 23. The only non-union store with close to those numbers is Smart & Final with 26.


phillip.molnar@sduniontribune.com (619) 293-1891 Twitter: @phillipmolnar