Negotiations between labor and management – led by a federal mediator – have resumed in the Southern California grocery workers strike, media outlets reported Dec. 3.

Roughly 70,000 members of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union have been on strike since Oct. 21 against more than 800 Southern California stores operated by Vons, Ralph's, Pavilions and Albertsons. Those stores make up roughly 60 percent of all groceries in the southern half of the state.

The strike took a new turn Nov. 24, when striking clerks were scheduled to start picketing distribution centers that are operated by the grocery chains and that supply the stores under strike. Officials of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters told The Los Angeles Times the union’s members would not cross those picket lines. Teamsters not only drive some of the trucks supplying the distribution centers, they also work in the centers.

Meanwhile, across the country, Danny Jones, the mayor of West Virginia state capital Charleston asked striking workers and Kroger food stores to come to agreement and end the strike there before the city loses its last union retail grocer, The Associated Press reported.

In that strike, which covers stores in West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky and which also centers on health benefits, negotiations between Kroger and United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 were moving ahead. But Kroger, according to media reports, may not reopen some stores covered by the labor action.