Roughly forty-eight thousand grocery-store workers across Southern California are preparing for a strike. Their three-year contract, which covers workers at 540 stores, expired on March 6, and on March 27, the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) announced that a strike authorization vote across the seven locals covered under the contract had returned 95 percent of ballots cast in favor of authorizing an unfair labor practice strike. The UFCW has filed claims with the National Labor Relations Board alleging employer intimidation, harassment, surveillance, and illegally influencing workers during negotiations, accusations that the companies deny.

The stores are Albertsons, Vons, Pavilions, and Ralphs, comprising two of the country’s largest supermarket chains — Albertsons owns Vons and Pavilion, while Kroger owns Ralphs. Bargaining has been ongoing since late January, with the two sides meeting today, but workers are now prepared to walk out if need be. Should they walk off the job, it would be the largest strike since the pre-pandemic teachers’ strikes, and the largest private-sector strike since seventy-four thousand UAW members struck General Motors in 2007.

“Bargaining committees composed of front-line grocery workers and union leaders came prepared with proposals that would fairly increase wages and improve store conditions to reflect the needs of workers in a pandemic and post-pandemic world,” the UFCW said in a statement earlier this month. “The corporations representing the stores offered pennies, a proposal that would ultimately be a pay cut due to inflation.”