December 15, 2010

The A&P Bankruptcy: It’s Always the Union’s Fault

This was captioned "A&P still exists?" on Flickr. It's a total mystery why a store this massive can't compete with Super Stop & Shop. | Flickr/<a href=http://www.flickr.com/photos/iandavid/3274996459/sizes/z/in/photostream/">iandavid</a> (<a href="http://www.creativecommons.org">Creative Commons</a>).

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On Tuesday, RedState’s Erick Erickson used his morning email blast to highlight a post by LaborUnionReport (an anti-union website) blaming the bankruptcy of the “151-year old Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Co., once the nation’s largest grocery chain,” (a.k.a. A&P) on the Union of Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW). A&P’s bankruptcy couldn’t possibly have to do with the massive changes in the grocery industry since 1975, the last year that the company dominated the market. Fragmentation of the industry, the gradual extinction of smaller stores, the explosion of regional supermarket chains, and the eventual arrival of Target and Walmart in the grocery business couldn’t have possibly been the reasons behind A&P’s decline. Nor could a series of dubious acquisitions, an ultra-competitive market, and the most difficult economic environment in decades have killed the company. No: it had to be the union. I asked Jim Papian, a spokesman for the UFCW, for their side of the story:

The charge that the union is responsible for [the A&P bankruptcy] is patently absurd. UFCW members work for regional chains Shop Rite, Stop + Shop, FoodTown, (to name only a few) plus national, Fortune 500 companies Kroger, Safeway, and Supervalu. These grocers are successful. Some are industry leaders. UFCW members work in almost every kind of market across the country and are instrumental in the success these companies enjoy.

If hiring unionized workers is so devastating to a grocer’s bottom line, why do so many other companies manage to do it and stay in business? Anyway, I’m sure if Mother Jones goes under, it will be because we’re UAW members, not because we’re in print journalism. Like all union members, our main goal is to undermine the financial health of our employer so we all lose our jobs.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

payment methods

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