As the Southern California grocery strike nears the end of its second month, Kroger Co. is taking extreme measures to keep its Ralph’s stores in the strike zone open. The national grocery chain will import up to 60 non-union workers from the Atlanta area, a continent away, to keep the West Coast stores open, The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.

Ralph’s – a subsidiary of Kroger – is one of four chains in Southern California covered by the strike. The labor dispute started when roughly 70,000 members of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union went on strike 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.

Grocery workers in West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky went on strike soon after.

While those strikes were under way, labor disputes started to flare up in other parts of the nation. Federal mediators were able to either end or avoid strikes in several locations.

The same union covers workers in Atlanta and Southern California, the newspaper reported, and the movement of assistant managers and other non-union employees from one area to another is a sticking point with the union.