California Workers Sue Albertson's Stores.

SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 19, 1996--Ten current and former Albertson's employees filed a class action lawsuit Tuesday in federal district court here seeking back overtime pay from the nation's fourth largest grocery chain, it was announced today at a 10:30 a.m. news conference outside

(Editors: Three Albertson's employees will join union officials at the news conference. Two are plaintiffs, Justice and Goni.)

The California employees' action follows by one week a similar suit filed in Washington State court. Both suits are financially supported by their union, the 1.4 million member United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), which represents some 31,000 Albertson's employees nationwide.

The union-backed actions were both filed after Albertson's, which has about 200 stores in California, filed suit Sept. 9 in federal court in Idaho seeking to bar union-represented employees from "filing or initiating" such actions without "first exhaust(ing) the grievance-arbitration" procedure in their union contracts.

State and federal laws allow workers to recover wages going back years, union officials say, but Albertson's is trying to limit backpay to weeks or months and to avoid the damages for repeat and willful violations provided by law. Union attorneys believe there is not legal basis for Albertson's to deny its employees their right to seek better remedies under state or federal law.

UFCW Executive Vice Presidents Carl C. Huber and David T. Barry blasted Albertson's for "seeking to deny these better remedies to its employees," and the union last week filed an unfair labor practice charge against the chain with the National Labor Relations Board for unlawful interference with the employees' rights to engage in "activity protected by labor law.

"It is more than ironic that Albertson's, which has systematically sought to weaken and undermine the grievance procedure, now tries to tell employees that is the only way to address claims for unpaid wages earned for working off the clock," Huber and Barry wrote in a letter mailed last Friday to the UFCW's Albertson's members. "Albertson's has created conditions that foster work off the clock throughout its stores in California and in other states where it does business," the suit alleges. "This unlawful conduct by Albertson's has not been isolated and sporadic, but rather it has been repeated and frequent."