The chains – Albertsons, Ralphs and Vons – account for more than 50 percent of the grocery business in Southern California. The United Food and Commercial Workers union represents some 65,000 employees at those stores.

    The two sides say they have met only a handful of times to negotiate a new contract.

    In 2003, a contract stalemate resulted in a bitter 4 ½ month strike and lockout that cost the chains an estimated $2 billion, disrupted the lives of millions of Southern California consumers and caused economic hardship for union members on the picket lines.

    Besides wages and health care issues, an important goal for the union this time is getting rid of a two-tier employee system that the union agreed to in the last contract.  Under that system, new hires get paid less and it takes them longer to qualify for benefits than it did longtime employees. They also pay a greater share of the cost for those benefits.

    The union has complained that the two-tier system is unfair because workers doing the same job get different pay. They blame it for increased employee turnover within the grocery industry as well as for the rising number of employees without health care coverage.

    Grocery store executives credit the system with helping cut labor costs so they can compete more effectively in an increasingly competitive environment.

    Despite the lack of progress toward a new contract, few industry watchers can imagine another strike happening.

    “Both sides are very cognizant of the debacle that took place last time,” said Kent Wong, director of the UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education. “Both sides were hurt. That is in the back of everyone's mind.”

    Still, Mike Shimpock, a spokesman for the UFCW's seven local chapters in Southern California, said that if a deal is not in place by the end of March 5, the union could do limited job actions at individual stores.

    In response, the stores could stop automatically deducting union dues from employee paychecks and routing them to the UFCW.

    Pete Van Helden, senior vice president of SuperValu, the parent company of Albertsons, said he's spoken with his employees and no one wants another strike.

    “They are not interested in a labor dispute. Our customers are not interested in a labor dispute. We are not interested in a labor dispute,” he said in a conference call with reporters yesterday.

    Longtime union members say they don't want a strike but are prepared for anything in order to get what they see as a fair contract.

    “I'm praying every day that there isn't a strike,” said Suzanne Castro, who works at an Albertsons in Oceanside. “But if that is what it comes to, I'll be right out there with my sign.”

    In the past three years, the grocery chains say they have negotiated new contracts with the UFCW in other parts of the country. Many of the deals came after a contract had expired.

    Larree Renda, chief strategist and administrative officer for Safeway, Vons' parent company, said 19 of the past 20 UFCW contracts were settled after the previous contract had expired.

    But Mickey Kasparian, who heads Local 135, the UFCW chapter for San Diego and Imperial counties, said the supermarkets should not be cavalier about the deadline. He said the grocery workers want a deal by March 5.

    “If there's good dialogue and negotiations are progressing and we're making progress, sure, if it takes a little extra time, that's one thing,” Kasparian said. But he added, “We've made no progress.”

    Representatives from the grocery stores say the way the current talks are structured is one reason for their slowness.

    In the past, the two sides have had coordinated talks, with the chains negotiating as a single unit and the seven Southern California locals working collectively as well.

    This time the UFCW wants each local chapter to negotiate separately with each company in order to prevent the trio from working together as they did in 2003-04 when they shared revenue and locked out workers.

    Kasparian said that while the talks are ostensibly separate, representatives from each of the unions and each of the grocery chains are in the room to make the process smoother.

    Rich Cox, senior vice president of labor relations for Safeway, said the union may view that approach as an attempt to coordinate the dialogue, but it's just not the case.

    Vons, he said, has met only with Local 135 – and that meeting “lasted less than 30 minutes.”

    In their quest to rid their members of the two-tier employee system, union leaders point to recent deals with Stater Bros. and Gelsons, a Los Angeles grocery chain, where it was eliminated. The union has argued that if Stater Bros., a smaller, regional chain, can eliminate the two-tier wage scale so can the larger Albertsons, Vons and Ralphs.

    But representatives from the three chains say the two-tier approach has helped them control costs and provided flexibility as they face a challenge to traditional grocery retailing from such stores as Wal-Mart, Whole Foods, Target and others.

    “It's been a great solution,” said Van Helden, the SuperValu vice president.

    Ralphs President David Hirz agreed, saying, “The second-tier is working.”

    Grocery workers and union officials say Wal-Mart has yet to materialize as a real competitive force in Southern California and point to the three chains' increasing profits. On Thursday, Safeway reported that its fourth-quarter earnings were up 77 percent from the previous year.

    “The two-tier only works for the people who run the corporations,” said the UFCW's Kasparian. “It works for the CEOs and the people who stuff more money in their pockets. It doesn't work for the employees.”

    Ted Taft, managing director of Meridian Consulting, said the chains have rebounded since the strike and are performing well against the competition.