LOS ANGELES, Sept. 19 (UPI) -- A grand jury has indicted some former California supermarket managers for hiring locked-out workers as strikebreakers, federal prosecutors announced Friday.
The 23-count indictment handed down late Thursday alleges that the defendants conspired to secretly hire union members to work in their stores even though they had officially been locked out during a 2003-04 industry-wide labor dispute.
"The covert rehiring of locked-out workers was intended to better Ralphs' position in the 2003-2004 labor dispute by, among other things, mitigating the financial and operational hardships of a complete lockout," the U.S. Attorney's office in Los Angeles said in a written statement.
The lockout at Southern California's three major supermarket chains led to a 2006 guilty plea from Ralphs to charges it secretly rehired some 19,000 union workers in order to keep their stores open during the lockout.
The charges announced Friday named eight current and former Ralphs executives and managers who were indicted on charges related to the alleged concealment of their rehired workers' identities from the IRS and Social Security Administration.
