Grocery Strikers Turn Violent

By Onell R. Soto
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

October 22, 2003


K.C. ALFRED / Union-Tribune
Picketers are reflected in the window at the Ralphs on Montezuma Road where a customer had the aisle to herself.
CHULA VISTA – Two locked-out supermarket union members are facing charges in the beating of a replacement worker with a baseball bat last week.

Simon Jose Thompson, 33, and Charles Matthew Olvera, 27, both of Chula Vista, remained in jail yesterday on suspicion of assault and conspiracy, California Highway Patrol spokesman Mark Gregg said.


A prosecutor said a formal decision on charges is expected today.

The 27-year-old replacement worker had just left the Ralphs supermarket on East Palomar Street in Chula Vista early Friday morning when his car was followed by the two pickets "apparently attempting to run it off the road," Gregg said.

The two used their car to block his vehicle at the Main Street on-ramp to northbound Interstate 805, and everyone got out of their cars, he said.

One of the men then struck the replacement worker in the face and chest with a baseball bat. The other man punched the replacement worker, Gregg said. The two men also knocked out the back windows of the replacement worker's car.

Gregg did not identify the injured worker. The man told officers he didn't need medical help, but later went to a hospital on his own and was told that surgeons will have to rebuild his face for it to heal correctly, Gregg said.

The two union members were arrested Friday afternoon after an investigation by CHP investigators, he said.

Calls to Ralphs and union officials were not returned.

The incident is the first in which labor violence has led to felony charges locally since union members struck Vons and were locked out by management at Ralphs and Albertson's supermarkets Oct. 11, said a spokesman for the District Attorney's Office.

Elsewhere, reported arrests include a 17-year-old Riverside girl accused of shooting a pellet gun at pickets, and a locked-out worker in Fullerton accused of hitting a truck with his picket sign, threatening the driver, and then closing a truck door on the driver's hand.