Ralphs to Close 15 Stores (Calif. grocery chain)

[UpInArms]

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-031704ralphs_lat,1,2261530.story?coll=la-home-headlines

(free registration or try www.bugmenot.com )

Ralphs Grocery Co. today announced plans to permanently close 15 poorly performing Ralphs supermarkets in Southern California employing about 600 workers.

The announcement by the chain, which is owned by Cincinnati-based Kroger, comes about two weeks after Kroger, Albertsons and Safeway's Vons and Pavilions units settled a bitter and costly five-month- long strike and lockout with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.

However, Ralphs officials said that the store closures, which will take place within 60 days, are not related to the dispute and instead reflected the poor financial performance at the individual markets. The company said it will reassign the 600 affected workers to other stores.

...more...

[WaywardSon]

1. This strike wasn't very smart...

Can you say WALL MART.

[mitchtv]

12. so you mean that the employees

should have become Walmart associates without a fight?. There comes a time, like with Eastern Airlines, that if you can't pay your employees properly, its time to go out of business.They played hardball , kept it up, thinking they could destroy the union, and lost more money than the had planned to lose.
Oh, and yeah, it wasn't a strike at Ralphs, it was a lockout. Von's had the strike. Von's employees should take less cause Ralphs might lay someone off? I don't think so

[ScottInFlorida]

2. There's gotta be some collusion here?

Don't you think?

Regards,

S>

[bemildred]

3. Nothing to do with the strike. Of course.

I went in the local Ralph's for the first time since
the strike started (recycling some bottles) and it was
like a library at ten in the morning.

[Snow]

4. That's okay.....

I'll just keep going to Trader Joe's and Farm Fresh Foods (local Mexican grocery). Who needs walmart. They won't want to come in to Pasadena anyway, no huge expanses of land to gobble up. And South Pasadena keeps everybody out (even when they really shouldn't)

[goclark]

5. Down with Wal Mart

This is exactly what they predicted would happen.

Walmart will be going into the grocery business soon,watch my words.

[notbush]

8. Wal-Mart is already

the largest grocer in the world.....What do you mean "going to get into the grocery business".

[goclark]

14. I meant going into groceries "big time"

I can tell in my own community how they have skillfully closed out all the small business with their mega stores. Now, after the strike,the quality of the other markets has declined. I also believe they have raised their prices even when they say the are giving you a discount.

[mitchtv]

13. they opened their first California "superstore"

in La Quinta last week. Ralfs is too expensive anyway, Waaaaay to expensive. I go to trader joes , stater brothers, and the others too, i get the sale items from each. I have the luxury of time, I am retired.

[no_arbusto]

6. This is bad for the workers

The only good thing about this is that there is now one less rightwing business in each of these cities. I frequented the soon to be closing Upland store when I lived in CA last summer. I got nauseous every time I heard "Now for a Fox News update" on the instore speaker system.

BTW, this store was a few blocks from my aunt and uncle's, and cousins' million dollar-a-home neighborhoods. This store is not closing for "financial" reasons, nor are the others. Look at the neighborhoods where they are located. They are Repuke central.

[Snow]

7. I have two real nearby -

one is on Lake in Altadena, lower-middle heavily african-american neighborhood. Not anywhere near back up to speed yet. The other's in La Canada, on the main street - strongly yuppie area. They're doing just fine, thank you. Guess which stores will close.

[theoceansnerves]

9. maybe

it's their fucking off the chart high prices. that store is ridiculous.

[LibDemAlways]

10. I think the markets overestimated their importance.

People had months to adjust and find other places to shop. Now no one seems in a particular hurry to go back to Vons, Ralphs, and Albertsons - which collectively screwed over their workers. Big beneficiaries in my neck of the woods have been Costco, Gelsons, and Trader Joes.

[Piperay]

11. I have a Ralphs practically across

the street from me but I haven't been in there in months, the place is deader than a doornail but they aren't closing it because it is one of their really elite ones. This Ralphs is so fancy they have fountains out front and sculptures around the outside edges of it, maybe if they hadn't spent so much decorating it they wouldn't have to close their other stores.

[radwriter0555]

15. bugmenot it AWESOME. love it, thanks!

n/t

[calimary]

16. Link didn't work for me.