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A recent scuffle over the use of nonunion labor to build a supermarket in Berea may boil over into a labor boycott against Tops Markets Inc. But don't look for Tops' own unionized workers to join the protest.
Tops filed a lawsuit last month accusing Local 310 of the Laborers International Union of North America of "harassing and threatening to use physical violence" against a nonunion construction crew working on a new Tops store along Bagley Road. Tops won a temporary restraining order preenting Local 310 from organizing a group of more than three pickets at the site.
Local union leaders insist the lawsuit is an indication that Tops has no plans to hire union labor to construct new stores or to renovate its existing 44 supermarkets, which until this month were known as Finast Friendly Markets. In response, Local 310 and the 100,000-member Cleveland AFL-CIO are pondering a boycott of Tops stores.
"They (Tops) may think this is just a small skirmish, but it's not," said John Ryan, executive secretary of the Cleveland AFL-CIO. "When a supermarket chain that has always used union labor tries to change that policy, then we have to...