Union aims to add HB Fresh & Easy

Huntington Beach’s Fresh & Easy store has become the front line of an effort by the country’s largest grocery union to unionize the new store chain.

The Huntington Beach store is the first to have a majority of workers sign cards to request unionization, officials said.

Organizers with the United Food and Commercial Workers, which represents workers at chains like Vons and Ralphs, have been working to persuade store employees to join a union almost since it opened, UFCW Local 324 President Greg Conger said.

“Someone who worked at the store contacted us from almost the very beginning,” he said.

The union also sent out mailers that referred people to a UFCW-funded website that calls the company’s parent corporation Tesco “the Wal-Mart of Britain” and criticizes its environmental and safety record.

A majority of staff members have signed union authorization cards and sent a letter to company executives asking for recognition, Conger said.

“We have sent a letter back to the employee instructing them that we would like to follow the process outlined in national labor law,” Fresh & Easy spokesman Brendon Wonnacott said. When interviewed, union officials were not aware of the company’s response.

Under national labor law process employees ultimately vote in a secret ballot that determines whether a union is formed.

Workers at the store had concerns about wages, health benefits, sick and vacation leave, as well as wanting the “job security” of an arbitration process for firings, Conger said.

Fresh & Easy offers full benefits and wages start at $10 an hour, Wonnacott said.

“We strive to make Fresh & Easy a good place to work,” he said.

According to Conger, workers are merely going along with what Tesco’s executives said earlier this year, which is that they were free to join a union if they wished to. But there have been no sit-down negotiations or recognition of a union at the store so far, he said.

“We’re waiting to see what they have to say,” Conger said.

MICHAEL ALEXANDER may be reached at (714) 966-4618 or at michael.alexander@latimes.com.