Legislative, Regulatory & Legal

Food Distributors International (FDI) and the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade Inc. (NASFT) announced that they have agreed on an initiative to develop strong inter-organizational ties under which FDI will provide services to all of the specialty food organization's members.

CLEMENTON, N.J., Oct. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- ShopRite announced today that the revised contract proposal they had presented to UFCW Local 1360 was rejected without review by union membership. The contracts between ShopRite and the Local expired in March/April and the parties continued to operate under an extension while they negotiated. On September 6, 2001 the union called for a work stoppage.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California in Fresno found that the USDA acted arbitrarily and capriciously and exceeded its statutory authority when it decided in June 2000 to allow Argentine citrus into the United States, according to Pierre Tada, co-chair of the U.S. Citrus Science Council (USCSC).

The union representing 1,400 striking workers at 10 Shop Rite supermarkets in southern New Jersey on Tuesday rejected the latest company contract proposal for settling the four-week old strike.

Continuing its efforts to mitigate the economic aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the National Restaurant Association on Tuesday met with a number of the nation's top elected officials to convey the effect of the tragedies on many of the nation's restaurants and their employees.

Safeway and Albertson's on Tuesday offered their 28,000 unionized workers in Northern California a contract that includes a proposed wage increase the union has said for several months is unacceptable. The union said a strike is very probable as early as Oct. 8.

C. Manly Moplus, president and CEO of the Grocery Manufacturers of America, was appointed on Monday to the United States Department of Agriculture and the Office of the United States Trade Representative's Agricultural Policy Advisory Committee for Trade (APAC).

Nine current and former African-American employees of Harris Teeter Inc. are seeking a class-action racial discrimination lawsuit against the North Carolina-based chain and its parent, Ruddick Corp., according to an article in the Atlanta Business Chronicle.