Strike Causing Disruption : Food Center Hoping Shipments to Resume

If all goes according to plan, a truck will pull up to the Share Our Selves center in Costa Mesa today and signal what food bank operators hope will be the resumption of regular food shipments for Orange County’s hungry.

The hopes are based on the efforts of Lt. Gov. Leo McCarthy’s staff to negotiate a truce between the supermarkets and the striking Teamsters Union in the special area of delivering the markets’ surplus food to various food banks.

The food destined for Costa Mesa today--about 500 pounds of canned fruit, vegetables and meat--is from the Vons supermarket chain. According to Kurt Haunfelner, assistant chief of staff for McCarthy, Vons has been the only chain so far to commit to making the surplus food available.

‘A Certain Reluctance’

“We don’t have responses yet from everyone,” Haunfelner said. “We detect a certain reluctance because of the strike. They’re very reluctant to break ranks.

“We’ve got discussions going on with other markets, but we don’t have firm commitments. But there may be others over the next week or two that are willing to participate.”

For two years, the shipments of surplus food, such as dented canned goods and day-old bread, routinely have been trucked to the Food Distribution Center in Orange, a food bank operated by the St. Vincent de Paul Society that distributes the goods to 182 social service agencies in Orange County.

But according to food bank officials, since the strike the shipments have been reduced to a trickle that they fear will soon disappear completely.

Vandalism Feared

According to Haunfelner, the Teamsters local in Orange has offered volunteer union drivers to deliver the donated food in market-owned trucks to food banks. But markets have been reluctant because “they’re afraid some vandalism will occur,” Haunfelner said.

David Willauer, a spokesman for the Food Employers Council that represents the major supermarket chains, confirmed receiving the Teamsters’ offer.

“But that presents us with a tremendous security problem,” Willauer said. “These are the people who are striking against us. . . . Putting Teamster members into market-owned trucks would be “placing them in the hands of the people causing the damage. . . . We don’t want the striking employees involved,” Willauer said.

Haunfelner conceded Thursday that he had not settled that question even with Vons, which had promised to make the groceries available.

Cargo Eagerly Awaited

“We’re going to try to make that arrangement with Vons. All we’ve said is we will make arrangements for delivery. We’ll do it ourselves or, presuming they’re agreeable, we’ll use a Teamster driver.”

Regardless of who drives the truck, the cargo will be eagerly accepted at Share Our Selves, said Jean Forbath, the organization’s director. The struggle to obtain food has become harder than usual during a season when demand usually rises.

“The food we get from the food bank in Orange has dried up, and we’re having trouble getting the bread we usually get from local markets,” Forbath said. “We had a lot of food come in from donations at Thanksgiving time, and that really helped us, but right now it’s pretty bleak.

“Tuesday we had 274 families come to us. We’ve been averaging over 200 families a day over the last month. We’ve been able to give them something. Except for the couple of days before Thanksgiving, we’ve never had meat and not enough peanut butter. We’ve had beans and powdered milk, but we ran out of bread the other day, which is extraordinary.”