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Market Basket revolt continues
By adamg on Sun, 07/20/2014 - 9:08pm
Dan O'Brien photographed the Arthur T. posters in the bakery at the Ashland Market Basket today. He also captured the pro-T flier posted to the store entrance.
Produce shelves at Market Basket stores across the area remained empty today as Arthur S.'s minions fired at least 7 pro-Arthur T. workers.
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Comments
Disgusting
Think about this for one second. These were not 15 year old kids with summer jobs. These were people that helped make Market Basket where they are today. I feel no matter what side you're on in this, you have to recognize the obvious contribution these people made to this company and the new management has just said we don't give a fuck. New management has just about proved to me that what every one of these men and women who are willing to risk their livelihoods for their company are saying is 100% true.
Remember Johnny's Foodmaster?
Loot and leave. That's what this is about. The "new" managers are NOT INTERESTED in running a grocery chain. They want to liquidate so they and the other indolent heirs can run with the money they have spent no time and little effort earning.
You mean
Johnny's Foodmaster, the only grocery store that served Charlestown in the years I lived there? Of course! I wonder now how a town that's one square mile total with three sets of projects in it feels about shopping at a Whole Foods now?
i feel for the employees but
i feel for the employees but it is their company to do what they want with. if they just want to liquidate their assets and get fat from their sweet market basket fire sale, that is their right
doesnt mean it doesnt suck
You kinda just made an
You kinda just made an argument of the problem with capitalism. Adam Smith imagine it as a system where the local butcher to serve well as it is in his interest to do so. What you said shows, optimal service and goods no longer makes the most optimal way to make money.
At least one thing in this fight that provide a little hope. It might be in the company right to liquidate and get fat, but it is also in the employee's rights to not just take it as they do that. Maybe it will sour the fire sale enough to back off, maybe it won't. But that is in the employee's side rights.
Indeed
The value of the company comes from their capital assets, their revenue, and their employees labor and productivity.
When you know the owners are just going to liquidate and run with the cash after a very hostile takeover like this, I totally support the employees and long time customers destroying 2/3rd the value before those asshole owners can sell. Walk away and leave the owners with the hot potato and a huge problem.
Getting rid of close to 200 combined years of middle management experience tells you all you need to know.
Really?
Your surprised that employees that publicly ripped upper management/BOD, encouraged a work stoppage unrelated to collective bargaining issues, and actively worked to damage the corporation were terminated?
The new management has been in place for a few weeks. Maybe they do suck. But I would have fired these people too. Their sense of entitlement is baffling. The BOD determines who runs the company, not the rank and file. These employees are destroying the company before the new management has a chance to ruin it on their own!
Sense of entitlement?
What sense of entitlement? The fired workers helped build that company into what it is today. They are choosing to not sit idly by as the money-hungry BOD ruin what they helped build. They have been watching for years now as the inner turmoil has caused strife. They have had enough and don't want to see the future of the company ruined and are doing what they believe is right to save it. It is hardly a sense of entitlement.
Yeah it is entitlement.
How many employees organize a work stoppage and rip their employer publicly in response to upper management changes? The very fact they are doing this shows a sense of entitlement - they think deli/produce managers should have a say in the Board's selection of a CEO and how dividends are distributed to shareholders! That's pretty fuckin' ballsy.
God fordid...
That employees should dare speak bad about management! Oh, the horror. The fact that they are willing to put their jobs on the line to make sure the company does not go down the drain does not show entitlement. It show a sense of loyalty to the company they have invested years of hard work and are proud to work at. They don't want to see the new board ruin everything the company stands for and what they helped build. It's indeed ballsy, but not an entitlement. If they don't fight back and speak out they know the company is doomed.
They seem loyal to me
They're loyal to their long-time employer. Then it looks to them like some bastards are trying to screw over the company and their executive.
Now, if you're the bastards, and want to say to those loyal employees, "You can be bought and sold. Your loyalty to the company and executive is null and void. You now owe your loyalty to whatever the bastards decide to do"... well, you're half right. Their loyalty to a company that suddenly effectively will not exist doesn't mean anything, but the effectively new company does not deserve loyalty and will not have it.
Legally, yes, the employees are basically bitches of the corporation, and the corporation can change the agreement at any time. And if you were a bastard, you'd resent your bitches mouthing off, and smack them down.
But maybe, if you're not the bastards, you'll cut the employees slack for their final gesture of loyalty to the disappearing company.
They can't fire hourly
They can't fire hourly employees who are striking, so the board is instead firing management. These guys want to be fired as protest, pretty much. IT's shitty how much Arthur Satan cares about profits over anything else, with board members earning $6-7mil just to sit on the board. (Source: relative who manages a store who is in danger of being fired for being a T supporter).
Thing is, where is S going to find people to replace these dedicated workers?
Market Basket
No other chain can do what Market Basket did under the
leadership of Arthur T. D. I understand the company carried
little debt and opened stores without squeezing vendors
From the moment you enter a MB there is more staff on hand than
any competing store. The floors polished first thing in the morning
and employees cheerful and pleasant each with a name tag with
length of service many over 25 years. What a statement that makes
about leadership at the top and on down to men and women who
feel that they work for an organization that values their work .
How very rare in today's business world.
I can't say enough in support for the previous administration of Arthur T.
None of the family has to worry about paying a mortgage or sending
children to school, yet it seems greed has poisoned the well that was
so goood for staff, customers and communities
New business model.....
The board is going to see what happens when you try to operate a supermarket without customers.
Another Shaws?
Isn't that what Shaws/Star has been trying for years?
Then again, I live in the Merrimack Valley where Shaws is all but dead and gone. Aside from Whole Foods in Andover and a couple Hannafords around Lowell, we've got nothing but S&S if Market Basket goes.
I'm just at a loss for words
This issue has gone to a whole other level now.. I honestly didn't expect the walk out to even happen as many folks are just talk. But its clear that the employees are not just talk and will walk. I hope associates in the stores walk out and shut the chain down. They can't fire everywhere all at once. No way, they WOULD put themselves out of business.
But its clear that the new management could not give a shit and will just make more heads roll. In the eyes, getting rid of a 35 year manager is a GOOD thing as they no longer have to pay out retirement. It's very sad that the this is how it is.
As I would like to believe that something good will happen, I predict nothing will and more heads will roll. These new CEOs are hard core jerks and care about no one, except maybe their money managers.
I hope national news outlets (the NYT and the Wash Post have picked up the story). This is UNPRECEDENTED for a retail chain, and maybe the bad PR will nudge the new management along (and out the door). But I'm not holding my breath.
Together we stand, united we fall.
Biting the had that feeds you
It's funny how all these employees feel they are entitled to they're jobs. They aren't. The leaders can do whatever they want. Meanwhile, the employees choose do disrupt the business that pays them in a non union related issue. The employees are the ones that will kill the company. The stores wont be able to serve their customers, the customers will go elsewhere, and the leaders will just cash out for the money. It's corporate culture, not to mention the problems that inevitably arise when a family controls a corporation. If they truly want their former leader back, there are better ways to go about it than disrupting the business as a whole.
Lastly, I shop at MB, but with every local MB to me forcing the subject down their customer's throats, I may go elsewhere. I just want to buy groceries, not get involved in corporate crap.
You're right that legally
You're right that legally these people aren't entitled to their jobs. That's because we here in the US have chosen to write our labor laws that way, in most states. I think your view of who adds value to a company is sadly narrow, and I don't think 'corporate culture' is some sort of inevitability. Maybe if more people cared about what goes on between employer and employee in the businesses they frequent, the laws would be different.
I don't agree that the employees feel entitled
It seems to me they're willing to walk out and protest the new management and willing to be fired for it. That's hardly a sense of entitlement towards their job.
I heard one of the fired 8 on the radio this morning, a guy w/ 41 years at the company. He was saying if Market Bastket called him today and asked him to come back now, he won't, unless it's with Arthur T.
Good?
Customer and Employees destroying a good % of the owners business and value is perfectly fine. After all, corps have been going down the other side of that street for quite some time. MB isn't any more entitled to workers and customers than they are to MB.
If MB can't operate and suddenly finds itself with no customers and huge costs to hire and train scabs, so be it. Management royally fucked up when they decided to antagonize a good chunk of what can be considered assets on their balance sheet.
The market is speaking. It's telling the new management to fuck off.
Basically, until a few a-hole econonics and business school....
...professors at University of Chicago (and a few other places) came up with the notion that the _only_ (important) stakeholders in corporations were shareholders (including speculative, short-term shareholders -- who just wanted to make the quickest bucks possible, even if it destroyed the corporation), customers, employees, pensioners, suppliers, the community, bond holders, etc were ALL viewed as corporate stakeholders.
Artie T
Well, they got the pols out on the issue:
Lawmakers Urge Boycott of Market Basket
Which seems pretty unique - maybe not unprecedented, but rare -- politicians coming out in favor of a boycott of a major local employer.
Anyone know if Market Basket employees are unionized? I don't think they are. They were treated well by management, so they never bothered, I believe. They might want to consider forming one in light of current events.
A union wouldn't affect this situation
A union is usually a good idea, but it would have no effect on an ownership or management change, and as pointed out above, the people fired were in management, so a union would have nothing to say about their being fired.
correct
I guess that's right in this case, if the union is not representing the management and those are the folks that got canned. But in some ways if I was one of the meat cutters or baggers I might start thinking, "crap, if they're going to can folks who've worked here since before I was born, how are they going to feel about me?"
Benevolent dictators are great when they're in power and being benevolent. The problem is that the system that has evolved rewards short-timers who wring out some serious cheese from a business and then leave a husk to rot. It's not a sustainable way of doing things. In fact it behaves a whole lot like cancer or a virus.
What could help those people
What could help those people would be to launch a age discrimination suit , really muddy the waters. If this was a union action, the company might be able to sue the union for the work stoppage.But , in the case of management changes, like mergers or acquisitions, there is language that determines what happens to unionized employees usually, such as severance pay , or seniority positioning for the available contracted work. There are plenty of precedents to refer to, usually you just have to suck it up and endure. Usually , one CEO is just as bad as another.
Who else is sick of this story?
I have never been in a Market Basket and there are none near my home or work. Watching Market Basket implode is like watching Iraq implode. "These people" will never get along with each other. It will not end well for anyone.
But honestly, I'm just not that interested.
Sick of the story but has to keep watching
At least in Chelsea and Somerville, and probably everywhere else, these stores are extremely popular and crowded and essential to our communities.
I'd get bored if a similar story happened around Hannaford or Roche Bros. (neither of which are in my area), but the story would still be important and worth daily coverage.
Arthur T may have run a good store but far from faultless
I don't disagree that Arthur T was a good guy and ran a good store but he also had some deals on the side with his wife and real estate that cost the company much more than it would had these transactions be less incestuous and made them a bundle. This is the crap the board sees and had enough of one owner stacking the benefits to the detriment of the others,
Arthur T got fired but he has millions in the bank and still owns a good part of the company. He will feel no pain other than in his ego.
The workers who through themselves on their swords are the ones that will pay and if the company is put out of business that family will still be wealthy and workers out of jobs.
market basket
Should not shop Market Basket anyways. They are a bunch of scabs. Shop UNION stores .Support labor
Quality of supermarket foods should be improved.
The quality of the foods at Demoulas Market Basket like other supermarkets has been high in salt, sweeteners, simple carbohydrates. Supermarkets should change the foods supplied with better quality foods, healthier packed foods!
Or you should buy different food at the supermarket
Until this week at least, you could go to Market Basket and buy nothing but produce if you wanted.