SAN DIEGO -- Negotiators for three supermarket chains and grocery clerks reached a tentative contract agreement Thursday, creating hope that the longest supermarket strike in U.S. history would end and send 70,000 financially strapped employees back to work.

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Customers React To Announcement

Greg Denier, a spokesman for the United Food and Commercial Workers union, declined to disclose details of the agreement.

The 4.5-month strike inconvenienced millions of shoppers in Southern California and led to hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for the three grocery chains, which had taken a stand against rising employee health costs.

Officials with the union must submit the proposed contract to members for approval. It was not immediately known when they might end pickets and return to work. Voting could begin as early as Friday.

"This means a lot to me to hear that we get to go back inside the stores. It's been really hard, but we all (hung) in there and survived it. It's just a blessing that we are getting our jobs back," said Gina Singleton, a locked-out employee.

The strike targeted Albertsons Inc., Kroger Co., which owns Ralphs, and Safeway Inc., the parent firm of Vons and Pavilions, affecting 859 stores from San Diego north to San Luis Obispo and Bakersfield. Sympathetic shoppers flocked to smaller chains and specialty stores to avoid picket lines.

Negotiations had been deadlocked over the cost and scope of health benefits and a proposed two-tier wage system for future employees.

Union leaders framed the dispute as a national bellwether in the fight to preserve affordable health care insurance for the working class.

However, some shoppers saw the clerks as low-skilled workers who had enjoyed free health benefits for too long. Others put the blame on the supermarkets, criticizing their move to cut labor costs to compete against Wal-Mart and other non-unionized, big-box supermarkets.

The strike cost the grocery chains an estimated $2.5 billion in lost revenue. Safeway and Kroger each reported net losses exceeding $100 million in the quarter ended Dec. 31.

It became the longest-running strike in the history of U.S. supermarket labor but fell far short of the five-year strike by grape pickers in Delano during the 1960s -- the longest in California history.

The strike by grocery clerks involved the most California workers since a general strike in Oakland in 1946 that saw 130,000 members of several unions walk off their jobs in support of department store workers.