In honor of a Labor Day praising the dignity of work and blessing a broom, mop, and bucket — an economic system that places money at its center.
That's why they are being laid off despite the rise in ridership and the fare hikes.
"A way of life prevails in Market Basket saga" by Kevin Cullen | Globe Columnist August 31, 2014
The Market Basket saga, coming to a life-affirming conclusion on the cusp of Labor Day weekend, had a Hollywood feel to it. You know that somewhere in Southern California, more than one screenwriter is putting together a treatment that will make the rounds in the coming weeks. Too bad Frank Capra’s dead. He would have loved the script.
No doubt, there’s a playwright at work somewhere, too.
He could be wrong.
The Market Basket story is a drama, an allegory, morality play, and fairy tale, all rolled into one. Dysfunctional millionaire families, idealistic everymen, a happy ending....
Beyond the inevitable feel-good film, and whatever else is produced to immortalize this amazing saga, the Market Basket story is about to become a case study at any number of business schools.
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But what exactly will be the take on all this, from popular culture to academia?
In the movie, the workers will be portrayed as ordinary, principled people who actually believe in what they do and why they do it, people who were willing to put their financial well-being on the line to stick up for themselves and a benevolent boss, a boss who, unlike them, was going to be rich no matter how this ended.
In the business schools, prospective MBAs will be taught that the Market Basket board, and the people they brought in to replace Arthur T. Demoulas, did just about everything wrong. But, when faced with rebellious employees, wouldn’t most corporations do almost exactly what the Market Basket board did?
The bigger question is: Was this some kind of turning point in the wider culture or an anomaly? I would love to think it’s the former but I’m not so sure.
Corporations exist to make a profit. Stockholders are considered far more important than workers. Corporate leaders have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits for shareholders, not maximize the contentment of workers. The Supreme Court famously decided that corporations are people, but judicial ruling can’t give them souls. Corporate leaders are supposed to do that. One legacy of the Market Basket standoff may be to underscore just how vital that executive mandate is.
Artie T. Demoulas is a modern-day Fezziwig, the big-hearted warehouse owner in Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.” Fezziwig was a capitalist, but he prided himself on not maximizing profits at the expense of his employees, or his own soul. When the man who eventually buys him out makes a bid, suggesting he’ll never get a better offer, Fezziwig’s response could be lifted right out of the Market Basket story: “It’s not just for money alone that one spends a lifetime building up a business,” Fezziwig says. “It’s to preserve a way of life that one knew and loved.”
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Five years ago, the people who run some Hyatt hotels in and around Boston brought in a bunch of ladies to clean rooms for a lot less than the living wage they were paying their regular housekeeping staff. They shamelessly let the women they were pushing out the door train their replacements. It was like having a condemned man provide the bullets for his own firing squad.
I vowed, quietly, to myself, to never to stay at a Hyatt again. A couple of months ago, without thinking, I stayed at a Hyatt in New York. I remembered my vow at checkout.
Sorry I forgot to find the links.
Standing on principle takes more than principle. It takes memory.
On Friday, at the Market Basket in Warner, N.H., both the promise and peril of their new world order was on display....
At least you know where we are all heading.
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Related: Market Basket Shopping List
"Obama returning to state hit by strife
MADISON — The last time President Obama celebrated workers’ rights at a Wisconsin Labor Day event, there was barely a hint of the turmoil to come when public employees staged massive protests in an unsuccessful bid to keep collective bargaining rights. Four years later, Obama returns Monday just as Republican Governor Scott Walker is locked in a tight reelection campaign with the vote two months away. Walker is the architect of the law limiting bargaining rights."
I'm tired of the $hit-political fooleys, sorry.
Also see:
Market Basket’s lesson for unions
Surviving the gig economy
What did you learn?
Careers hinge on a dubious personality test
Two-tiered labor market raises complex new issues
Jobless men are the thorniest social issue in the US
Work-life does not imply age, gender, or parenthood
I'm so glad we have corporate liberalism in the form of the Globe to look after labor.
Help wanted: Robots only, please
100 new jobs for 100 years
Embracing the three-day workweek
I'm thinking about it.
The dream is dead.
NEXT DAY UPDATE: A Market Basket store, returning to life
