
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 21, 1993                   TAG: 9307210186
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

FOOD LION GIVEN DEADLINE ON SETTLEMENT

The Labor Department has given Food Lion Inc. until Aug. 5 to accept a proposed settlement of massive child labor and overtime pay violations or face a class-action lawsuit that could subject the supermarket chain to millions of dollars in damages, government sources said Tuesday.

Details of the government's proposal, including key terms that sources said were "nonnegotiable," were not disclosed. The sources said the Labor Department Office of the Solicitor wrote to the company this month and rejected any attempt to settle the two categories of cases separately.

George Salem, a former solicitor of labor who is handling the case for Food Lion, confirmed Tuesday that the company was negotiating for a "global settlement" of the Labor Department charges under an Aug. 5 deadline. He would not divulge any other details of the negotiations except to say, "We are in the final stages of some very tough negotiations."

The Labor Department would not comment on the status of the talks.

Food Lion, the nation's fastest-growing supermarket chain with nearly 1,000 stores in 14 states, has been negotiating with the government for nearly eight months in an effort to settle complaints involving at least 1,400 alleged violations of federal child-labor laws, at least 1,200 of them involving teen-agers working around hazardous equipment such as meat slicers and package balers.

by CNB