Acme Markets

Acme supermarket clerks across South Jersey last night authorized their leaders to call a strike for the week before Thanksgiving, one of the busiest times of year in the grocery business. The full-membership vote was sought, union officials said, because negotiations with Acme Markets had been unproductive since contracts expired in April. Members were eager for a settlement but had been frustrated by the slow pace of talks, Sam Ferraino, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1360, said yesterday.

They include a 63-year-old barber, an optician, an immigrant-turned-pizza-shop owner, and a couple of small businessmen who opened stores after layoffs by downsizing employers. They are tenants at the Collegeville Shopping Center - mostly local folks running mom-and-pop shops - and they are enmeshed in a recession-era web of misfortune brought on by the loss of their big anchor supermarket a few months back. Theirs are not the only small businesses suffering as anchor stores vanish in a weak economy.

Unionized workers for Acme Markets last night overwhelmingly approved a new contract at the Spectrum that had been hammered out early yesterday morning. The vote was 985-19. Union leaders had recommended that their members accept the four-year pact. Wendell Young IV, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776, said the agreement gives its nearly 4,000 members, who hold the vast majority of jobs at 40 Acme stores in Philadelphia and the surrounding Pennsylvania counties, the equivalent of a 2 percent raise, preserves health and pension benefits, and protects union jobs.

Unionized workers for Acme Markets tonight overwhelmingly approved a new four-year contract at the Spectrum that had been hammered out early this morning. The vote was 985-19. Union leaders had recommended that their members accept the four-year pact. Wendell Young IV, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776, said the agreement gives its nearly 4,000 members, who hold the vast majority of jobs at 40 Acme stores in Philadelphia and the surrounding Pennsylvania counties, the equivalent of a 2 percent raise, preserves health and pension benefits, and protects union jobs.

Acme Markets and its unionized workers in Southeastern Pennsylvania said yesterday that they would continue negotiating through at least Monday, temporarily averting a work stoppage at 41 stores staffed by 4,500 employees. The two sides broke at 7 a.m. yesterday from all-night negotiations, with Acme saying it would hold off on imposing its new contract for the time being, officials said. Acme said it would continue to honor the contract that expired yesterday, at least until Monday, as management and the union try to reach a settlement.

Union officials yesterday accused Acme Markets of refusing to compromise as a midnight contract deadline approached, but they urged 4,500 area supermarket employees to report to work today and stay on the job until a membership meeting Wednesday at the Spectrum. The announcement by the United Food and Commercial Workers, made yesterday afternoon in front of an Acme store in King of Prussia, temporarily averted a threatened work stoppage today at 41 stores across Southeastern Pennsylvania.

For Acme Markets executives facing a potential walkout of union workers Friday, the contract dispute boils down to this comment, contained in a recent letter to employees from president Judith A. Spires: "Our business is under attack by the competition now. If we don't change, our competitors will win," Spires wrote to 4,500 Southeastern Pennsylvania members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776, whose contract expires Friday after...

Workers for Acme Markets Inc. poured into the Spectrum last night to reject a controversial contract, paving the way for a potential July 10 work stoppage at 41 Southeastern Pennsylvania stores. Members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776 turned down management's take-it-or-leave-it offer in a 1,607-87 vote. If Acme implements the rejected terms when the 4,500 workers' current contract expires July 10, union officials have pledged that members would not report to work.

She is a 54-year-old grocery worker at Acme, a 37-year veteran with the supermarket chain whose name embodies Philadelphia tradition. And today, she will go to church and pray. For several weeks, Anna Ryan has endured sleepless nights over the vote at the Spectrum tonight on a take-it-or-leave-it contract offer that Acme Markets says it needs to survive, but that union officials say preys on the recession fears of 4,500 grocery workers across Southeastern Pennsylvania. "Everything that I have worked for could virtually go up in smoke," said Ryan, a full-time office coordinator who started with Acme as a college student at La Salle, just like company president Judith A. Spires, and about the same time, back in the 1970s.

Could a summertime strike be ahead for Acme Markets Inc.? Top executives for the supermarket chain said yesterday that they were prepared for a walkout next month, but hoped their 4,500 unionized workers in Southeastern Pennsylvania instead would accept the company's final contract offer. Acme president Judith A. Spires said the company's "last best offer," a list of nonnegotiable terms presented to union officials June 9, was essential to stay competitive against unionized ShopRite, Super Fresh, and Pathmark, and nonunion Wal-Mart, Target, Giant, Wegman's, and Genuardi's.