When a strike is a strike: The saga of Market Basket in New England
By Peter Olney
What has been big regional news for four weeks is breaking into the national consciousness with extensive coverage in the New York Times, NPR and the Today Show.
It is the story of the fight for Market Basket/Demoulas supermarkets in Maine, New Hampshire and Eastern Massachusetts. The employees are on strike and are waging a colorful and creative community-based struggle to keep their CEO Arthur T. Demoulas. Arthur T. was thrown out by the Market Basket Board of Directors in June. The coup against Arthur T. was led by his cousin Arthur S. Demoulas. The forced exit of Arthur T. is the culmination of a long family struggle for control of the three generational family business founded by Grandfather Demoulas in Lowell, Massachusetts.
Truck drivers, warehouse workers, deli counter attendants, top level managers, checkers etc. are all on strike and have been for four weeks. The 71 stores are empty of all but dry goods, and even though the stores are open they are empty of customers who are loyal to Demoulas (This was the name of the market when I was growing up in Massachusetts!) because of the low prices and the customer service. My mother is one of those customers who are not shopping at Demoulas in solidarity with the strike. Customers are taping their receipts of money spent at other markets on the windows of the empty DeMoulas stores.
This is one of the most sweeping and captivating labor struggles in the private sector in years. There is no union and the employees are striking and protesting, at one rally 25,000 strong, for the return of their CEO Arthur T. False consciousness, confused workers bamboozled by their CEO and mangers, many of whom are also on strike? NOT! Demoulas workers are loyal because they can read the handwriting on the Wall Street wall. The new board is about cutting costs, squeezing assets and raising profitability on the backs of the employees. The employees correctly foresee a Bain Capital takeover ala the Mittster.
Long time Boston-based advocate for worker ownership and decision making, Chris Mackin, commented in a recent TV interview that the workers are specifically “challenging the business model” being proposed by the Market Basket board.
The outcome remains uncertain, but the power of 25,000 workers in motion and united with their customer and community supporters should not be lost on labor organizers. It is refreshing to see a real S-T-R-I-K-E in retail that paralyses production and commerce with the support of the customer community. I showed a video of a news clip of the Market Basket struggle to a training for union bus drivers and the reaction was surprising to me. I expected the reaction to dote on the fact that the workers were without a union and misguided in supporting their boss. Instead the participants in the training took inspiration in the passion, creativity of the workers and their close ties with their customer base. It was a great lead in for a healthy discussion of building a driver-rider alliance.
Strikes require deep roots and ties with the work force and their issues to be effective. In retail, there needs to be a solid alliance with the community customer base to be successful. Organizers taking on industry giants like Wal-Mart or organizing fast food workers at McDonalds would be well advised to study the lessons of Market Basket.
Links to checkout:
“Market Basket stalemate continues as cousins fail to reach agreement on terms of sale”, Masslive, 25 August 2014
Minor league team wades into Market Basket fight
What the Heck Is Happening at Market Basket?
Market Basket workers, customers rally around beloved CEO after firing
Readers should check out a recent Jacobin posting on Market Basket by Michael Lee-Murphy: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/08/the-good-kings-return/
Three other thoughts, more serious (I think) than the “reactions” I sent on Tuesday.
1. It was remarkable that the guys who really make this shutdown and protest possible were technically strategic, the M-B warehouse guys, who wouldn’t move perishables, fish, meat, and produce.
2. It’s highly interesting how the managers figure in the operation. Under Taft-Hartley they can’t be in a union. But because M-B workers do not have a union, M-B managers can work with them against ownership.
3. This kind of operation seems to me extremely specific, generally inapplicable. It can work only for the extremely unusual case of a company like M-B. You’d need a union to do it generally, either a Warehouse Union (ILWU) or something like UFCW. Of course if you had a union, but still suffered Taft-Hartley, you couldn’t have the managers. But because of the technical power of the warehouse-workers, you would still (I think) stand a good chance of forcing some serious, substantial concessions in the dispute, maybe not directly over who can be president of the company, but by demands (like the distribution of bonuses he was pushing) that would have the same effect.
I’m really grateful to learn that the sub-surface aspects of this strike are as significant as I hoped they would be.
The Market Basket battle is laden indeed with irony in the context of the US labor landscape. First, if there had been a union in place with a collective bargaining agreement there would have been no legal strike by the employees over the business model and the change in ownership. The US labor movement made a post war pact with business to surrender any say over management etc in exchange for “steady” improvements in wages and benefits.
All has not been forever quiet though on this front. Readers may remember the recent struggle in Chicago at Republic Windows and Doors led by the independent United Electrical workers who occupied the factory over the company’s decision to close and then persevered in seeking new ownership favorable to their interests.
The second irony is that in some ways the consciousness of the Market Basket workers is more in keeping with a traditional understanding of class consciousness whereby workers fight for their own class interests sometimes in alliance with other class forces (managers etc.) and even sometimes tactically and temporarily with Da Big Boss.
The beauty of the Market Basket struggle is the passion and determination and total involvement of the work force so in contrast to the media mirage “strikes” that have dotted the recent labor landscape. One worker or a handful walking out of a Wal-Mart store with 300 employees is not a strike!
Some irony here, no? This is hardly class consciousness in any traditional sense of that term.
You have provided a relevant context, and extra dimension, to this on-going labor action–something that is missing from all the media coverage. Thanks for your perspective.