Not a single Fresh & Easy market has opened in Southern California, but British owner Tesco is already under pressure from community groups to live up to promises to pay decent wages, provide affordable health benefits and reduce greenhouse gases.

Tesco, the world’s third-largest retailer, is spending $2 billion to build hundreds of small grocery stores in Southern California and the Southwest. In launching its U.S. business, the company has boasted of green and worker-friendly practices. But internationally, Tesco has raised the hackles of labor, environmental and animal welfare groups for various policies around the world.

A coalition of 25 community organizations in Southern California is set to call on Tesco today to sign a “community benefits agreement” that would bind the British retailer to its previous promises to pay its Southern California workers well above the minimum wage, offer health benefits and to be environmentally responsible when it launches its Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market chain of small grocery stores this fall.

In a letter to Tim Mason, chief executive of Tesco’s U.S. operations, the Alliance for Healthy and Responsible Grocery Stores said it was concerned about “Tesco’s record for living up to its commitments.”

It proposed negotiating a legally binding agreement that puts the retailer’s “promises into writing.”

Read the full L.A. Times story

.(registration required)