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So it’s finally over.

No more guilt over breaking the picket lines, no more impatience with clerks not knowing the difference between iceberg lettuce and cabbage.

Four and a half months after they were locked out, it looks like the striking supermarket employees will finally be back on the job this week, after ratification Sunday night of a deal negotiated by union leadership.

Dozens will be back at Ralphs in Westwood.

Certainly, I’m thrilled that they are returning to work, and most of them are, too. This marks the end to the largest supermarket strike in the country’s history. But somehow, I don’t feel any more inclined to go back.

First, the agreement is an unimpressive compromise. It gives veteran employees just enough in the way of benefits to draw them back to work. But in approving the contract, union members sold out the next crop of clerks.

New hires will make substantially less than the veterans; they will carry lean health care plans, and it will take them longer to rise through the ranks.

The two-tiered system will inevitably turn new hires against the old-hand employees. It nearly eliminates the incentive to work for a promotion, and the gap will be bad for morale. It creates a problem because employees will be doing the same work for uneven wages (perhaps a 15 percent difference, according to the Los Angeles Times), and the chains might be more likely to cut into the hours of the more expensive employees.

Not until recently was anyone expecting a deal like this. Many strikers, outside picketing for the past 20 weeks, feel betrayed.

The deal indicates an unwillingness on the part of the chains to accommodate anything more than the current staff’s interests, and it reflects the United Food and Commercial Workers Union’s inability to make any substantial progress.

If the UFCW is concerned with workers’ rights as a whole instead of merely this generation of strikers, the contract is a step backward. It looks like the union just blinked first.

Moreover, there’s been some especially bitter fallout. There were reports of suicides during the lockout, and news of some stores hiring temporary workers with false identifications – including at the Westwood location. There were dozens of arrests on the picket lines. Some workers don’t even want to go back.

We’ve had our share of walkouts around here. In early October, it was the TAs. A week later, it was the grocery clerks and the MTA, in the same weekend. Even the sheriffs were taking sporadic sick-outs. But while the transit strike hurt more consumers, the grocery strike is the one I’ll remember.

How do you return to a place that has locked out its own workers for nearly five months? Is it justifiable because a 3-pound bag of Red Delicious apples just can’t be found for $1.99 anywhere else?

It’s a strange dilemma to face as college students. We’re supposed to be the ones strapped for cash, looking to buy the cheapest produce around. Many of us are, and it’s true – sometimes you just can’t beat a big bag of apples.

But then sometimes it’s just not worth it. The pennies saved could be someone’s health care lost, and at the risk of throwing economists into a tizzy, perhaps the supermarkets should have just taken a risk by passing the cost on to their customers instead of trimming it out of their employees’ contracts.

There are rumors of huge sales on the horizon, from supermarkets hoping to win over their former customers. If the discounts are enough to lure them back, there might not have been any lessons learned.

E-mail cjenkins@media.ucla.edu if you know how those apples are $1.99.