Bashas’ files lawsuit against union

PHOENIX - One of the state’s largest grocery chains is going to court to halt what its lawyers claim is a malicious effort by a union to force its way into representing its workers.

Chandler-based Bashas’ Inc. wants a Maricopa County Superior Court judge to order members of the United Food and Commercial Workers union to stop making what it says are disparaging statements about the store and the products it sells. The request specifically references contentions by the union that the chain sells baby formula beyond its sell-by date.

But the lawsuit filed Tuesday seeks relief not just from the union.

It also wants a bar against similar activities from a group called Hungry for Respect, an organization Bashas’ lawyer Michael Manning says is little more than a front for union activities. The lawsuit also seeks a halt to the activities of Alfredo Gutierrez, a former state lawmaker and now a radio talk-show host, and Michael Nowakowski, a newly elected member of the Phoenix city council who manages a Phoenix radio station, both of whom Manning says are involved in a conspiracy to undermine the company’s business.

And the legal papers also want a court order banning the union members or their allies from entering any Bashas’ stores. That is based on the contention by Manning that people have planted outdated items on store shelves, though he conceded the evidence is only circumstantial.

James McLaughlin, president of UFCW’s Local 99, denied that anybody from the union is putting out-of-date baby food on the store shelves.

“It appears to me that Bashas’ is using this lawsuit to silence the community and its workers,” he said, adding he couldn’t comment further on the suit because he had yet to review it thoroughly.

Gutierrez called the litigation “standard union-busting tactics.’’

The lawsuit is the latest spillover of a multiyear battle by UFCW to unionize employees at the Bashas’ chain of stores, which includes Food City, AJ’s Fine Foods, Ike’s Farmers’ Market and Sportsman’s Fine Wine and Spirits. Fewer than 1,000 of the company’s approximately 14,000 workers belong to the union, solely because they were working for union-represented stores subsequently acquired by Bashas’.

That campaign took on a new look earlier this year when Hungry for Respect, which the UFCW has admitted it formed, claimed it found the out-of-date products on shelves of Bashas’ markets.

In the new lawsuit, Manning claims there is evidence that the out-coded items actually were planted by the union and its allies.

In one case, the lawsuit says, the shelves on which the out-coded products were supposedly discovered had just been reviewed by state inspectors. In another, items that are not even sold by Bashas’ were found in a store.

Manning also claims UFCW and its allies “attempted to sabotage Bashas’ by hiding numerous perishable products that require constant refrigeration or constant freezing” in places they would not be found.

He said the union has resorted to these tactics because a majority of Bashas’ employees have so far not wanted to join — and the company has been unwilling to force unionization on its workers.

“This union has instead resorted to extortion, racketeering, fraud, misstatements and lies about this corporate family,” Manning said. He called that “a very 1930s, 1940s sort of thug threat to this fine business.”

McLaughlin has admitted his organization is not happy with the idea of having representation decided by a secret vote of Bashas’ employees. Instead, he wants direct talks with the company.

But Bashas’ president Mike Proulx said that amounts to demanding the company force a union — and payment of union dues — on unwilling workers.

UFCW currently represents workers in the state’s two other grocery chains, Fry’s and Safeway. But their share of the market is being eaten into with the expansion of the nonunionized Wal-Mart into food sales.

The baby formula allegations became an issue because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires all manufacturers to put a “use by” date on all infant formula. This is the date after which the product might not have the full complement of nutrients, a crucial issue when babies are being fed only formula.

When the allegations were first made earlier this year, state health officials, who monitor compliance, said they had found no out-coded items on the shelves of Bashas’ stores in two years of inspections.