Strikers Call For Statewide Safeway Boycott

Eastern Washington Safeway workers are calling for a boycott of 50 Seattle Safeway stores in hopes of pressuring the company into settling a 60-day-old strike in Spokane and four other cities east of the Cascades.

Sean Harrigan, president of Spokane Local 1439 of the United Food & Commercial Workers, said Safeway's Western Washington employees should be concerned about Safeway's proposed two-tier wage system in Spokane because Safeway could try to implement the same type of plan in Seattle. Under a two-tier wage system, new employees are hired on a lower pay scale than current employees.

Union workers began handing out informational leaflets about the Spokane dispute yesterday at 20 Seattle-area Safeway stores yesterday. More than 1,000 Safeway workers are on strike in Eastern Washington.

The union yesterday publicized plans for the Seattle boycott in newspaper advertisements.

Harrigan recalled the 81-day Seattle-area grocery strike and lockout by more than 8,000 grocery workers in 1979.

``The strike in Spokane has been very effective just as the (1979) strike in Seattle was effective,'' said Harrigan at a news conference yesterday.

Grocery clerks and meat-cutters struck the Food Giant chain in Seattle in 1979, which prompted other chains such as Safeway and Albertson's to lock out employees. The union subsequently picketed all the stores involved in the lockout except Safeway, which it left

unpicketed.

Harrigan said Safeway's business in Seattle is off 30 percent of what it was before the 1979 strike. The union has said consumers changed their shopping habits away from Safeway even though the company wasn't being picketed.

Al Baird, spokesman for Safeway and lead negotiator in the Eastern Washington contract dispute, said the 30 percent figure ``is totally wrong.''

``I don't think the boycott will have any effect (on Safeway),'' Baird said. ``And even if it did, it's illogical to ask Safeway workers in Seattle to support a boycott that would only serve to hurt Safeway's business and reduce workers' hours.''

Baird said the key issue in Spokane is not a two-tier wage system but Safeway's insistence on finding a way to compete with nonunion stores and union stores with lower wage scales.

``We're not committed to two-tier wages,'' said Baird. ``We've asked the union to present alternatives that will solve these inequities.''

Baird said nonunion grocery stores have 35 percent of the market share in Spokane vs. just 5 percent in Seattle, which makes it difficult for Safeway to compete if it is required to pay its workers more than the going wage.

Grocery clerks in Spokane start at $4.50 an hour and, after two years of full-time work, become journeymen earning $11.21 an hour.