Good breakfast food for you.
Related: Globe Puts All Its Eggs in Market Basket
And they are rotten, readers:
"Boredom sets in amid slow business at Market Baskets" by Jack Newsham | Globe Correspondent July 31, 2014
Protests continued and although many workers got their weekly paychecks, deliveries of new groceries are rare — and in some cases, managers say, botched, containing expired food and some cases that are just not what store directors said they ordered.
What ungrateful bastards!
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Still, managers are hopeful. At a Market Basket in Lowell, a manager told the Globe that he was placing orders every day to get his grocery shelves restocked, although none were arriving. Workers are continuing to come in to work and many protest on their days off.
But with no customers and business at a standstill, some employees are outright bored. In Manchester and Newburyport, managers said workers have cleaned the stores several times over —in some cases, using toothbrushes.
The military-industrial-corporate culture complex has been firmly embedded.
“We did paint this week,” said Stephanie Schwechheimer, who runs a Market Basket in Haverhill. “Changed light bulbs, ceiling tiles, all kinds of things. You’d be amazed how busy we can keep things.”
Yeah, I know. I've been on the receiving end of that kind of slave labor that I am told Americans will not do. That's why the illegals are here.
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You know what? I quit.
"Market Basket vows to replace dissident workers" by Casey Ross, Taryn Luna and Jack Newsham | Globe Staff | Globe Correspondents July 31, 2014
Market Basket moved Wednesday to break up the walkout by employees and stem millions of dollars in daily losses at the fractured grocery chain, warning that the company would begin replacing workers unless they returned to their jobs next week.
The threat to remove uncooperative employees ratcheted up the pressure to reach a broader deal between warring factions of the Demoulas family on the potential sale of the company.
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The company’s cochief executives who replaced Arthur T. Demoulas said in a statement that they “need to have associates working to support stores, customers and vendors. We need associates to return to work on Monday, Aug. 4.”
The executives said Market Basket would begin hosting a job fair Monday to find new store directors, accountants, buyers, and other associates to help run the 71-store chain. Those job categories account for more than 600 positions at the company, current and former managers said, though it was unclear Wednesday night how many new employees the company needs.
The announcement drew an emotional reaction from employees who have refused to work as a demonstration of their solidarity with Arthur T. Demoulas. He was fired by his cousin, Arthur S. Demoulas, in late June, touching off a war for control of the company and a series of loud employee rallies.
Some employees said Wednesday that they will not budge in the face of possible termination.
“Everybody knows how all the employees feel, that we’re going back to work when Arthur T. Demoulas is reinstated as president of the company,” said Mike Maguire, director of produce operations at Market Basket. “We’re a pretty rigid bunch here at Market Basket. We’ve lived through plenty of adversity. Our demands are few.”
Others said they have continued to go to work every day, but the company’s managers appeared to be targeting their jobs anyway.
“We’re still cleaning the stores. We’re painting. We’re doing all that we can do,” said Brian McCullough, an assistant director of the Woburn store. He said the company would not accomplish anything by replacing workers because many customers have vowed not to shop at Market Basket until Arthur T. returns.
“Threaten us all you want, but customers aren’t going to come back to the building,” he said. “They are pulling up and telling us they aren’t coming back until Artie T. comes back.”
A company spokesman reiterated that Market Basket will not fire any employees willing to work.
The employee rallies on behalf of Arthur T. constitute an extraordinary show of support for a multimillionaire chief executive in an era when most corporate workers barely know their CEOs and would be loath to risk their jobs on behalf of top executives. Market Basket employees do not belong to a labor union.
The hero CEO in my corporate pre$$! That's the reason for the coverage. Just $erving their reader$hip!
The protests and customer boycott have left stores with hardly any fresh food or shoppers. Negotiations to resolve the dispute are not proceeding fast enough to prevent massive financial losses.
Arthur T. declined to comment Wednesday on the threat facing his former employees, citing a strict confidentiality agreement surrounding the negotiation of the potential sale of the company.
Arthur T. has offered to buy the shares of Arthur S. and other relatives, who own 50.5 percent of the company. The company’s board, whose majority favors Arthur S., has said it was still evaluating Arthur T.’s bid and offers from other suitors. People familiar with the talks said discussions Wednesday continued to focus on Arthur T.’s offer.
The anger surrounding the standoff — extending from employees to both sides of the Demoulas family — is threatening to unravel a company worth billions of dollars that provides more than 25,000 jobs in Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire.
Business specialists said the effort to replace protesting employees could further inflame emotions during the already tense negotiation, especially given the volatility of family members who have been fighting about Market Basket for 30 years.
“Management is playing hardball,” said Gary Chaison, a professor of industrial relations at Clark University. “I think the way out of this dispute . . . is to show conciliatory gestures. They’re doing it wrong.”
Sorry I'm not giving a s***, readers.
Other observers said the move appeared to reflect a practical necessity for a business that is losing millions of dollars because of a lack of workers to carry out essential tasks. “The cochief executives are being very tolerant of the situation, but they understand that they have a business and they have to run it,” said Ted Clark, director of the Center for Family Business at Northeastern University. “This is one of the laws of physics in business — every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”
Very interesting to saw, because whenever the laws of physics are invoked I can not help but think of that terrible day in September 2001 when the laws of physics were suspended three times, according to the government and the ma$$ media.
John Garon, a manager at the Burlington store, said 68 of Market Basket’s 71 store managers have signed a pledge that they won’t work for anyone but Arthur T. Demoulas. The three managers who didn’t sign, he said, are on vacation.
Though he’s attended rallies and protests in support of Arthur T. Demoulas, Garon said he has otherwise clocked in for his shifts. “We’ve been at work all week,” he said. “There are no customers in the stores. They’re boycotting.”
Even if they were not, there is NOTHING THERE to BUY!
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Globe has even set up a special section for this so it must be of prime importance.
Also see:
"Protesters voice unease over pipeline" by David Abel | Globe Staff July 31, 2014
The possibility that a multibillion-dollar natural gas pipeline could soon cut through her property, over nearby aquifers and other water sources, has sparked such fear in Lindsey Sundberg that the 29-year-old from Ashburnham joined more than a hundred others who came to Boston Common on Wednesday from communities across the state to protest the project.
In addition to concerns about spills, she and others said they worried that the pipeline, which would stretch 418 miles from shale gas fields in Pennsylvania to Dracut, could lower property values and stick ratepayers with the bill. They also raised concerns about the way the gas is extracted from the ground through hydraulic fracking, and the potential for contaminating water supplies.
“The environmental impact could be devastating,” said Sundberg, who joined the crowd in chanting “No Pipeline! No Pipeline!” “It would go through watersheds and along ridge lines. We need to stop this.”
As envisioned, the $6 billion pipeline would pass through an estimated 45 communities and potentially increase the amount of natural gas supplied to the region’s electrical grid by 15 percent, or enough to power about 1.5 million homes, according to Kinder Morgan, a Houston-based energy company that proposed the project.
The company seeks to fill a looming gap in energy needs as coal, oil, and nuclear plants in the region close. The demand for natural gas — which now produces the electricity for more than half the state’s homes — and the constraints in supply have led to shortages and prices that nearly quintupled last winter compared with a cold spell two years ago.
After we were $old on tracking as a cheap and plentiful solution to all our energy problems.
Kinder Morgan plans to submit an application in September for approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which regulates gas pipelines between states, and expects the project to start operating by late 2018.
“We are continuing outreach . . . conducting surveys where we have received permission from landowners to do so,” said Richard Wheatley, a spokesman for Kinder Morgan. “No decision has been made yet on the ultimate size or ultimate capacity of a pipeline.” Nor, he added, has a final route been selected.
In recent months, environmental advocates have raised increasing concerns about the pipeline. On Tuesday, three members of an environmental advisory committee for the Patrick administration resigned in part to protest the administration’s potential support for the pipeline, which they said would hinder the state’s goals of making substantial cuts to greenhouse gases that cause climate change.
In an interview Wednesday with WBZ-TV, Governor Deval Patrick said he was well aware of the concerns about the project and said he was “a little skeptical of it.”
“One wonders why they want to use a new right of way when they have an existing right of way,” Patrick said. “I’m not one who believes we shouldn’t have any new natural gas,” he continued, citing the need “to bridge to a carbon-free future as coal goes offline.”
“People do want to be able to have the lights come on when they flick the switch, and having some additional natural gas is helpful,” he said. “That is not an endorsement of a particular proposal, and certainly not the Kinder Morgan.”
He added: “There is an awful lot of local opposition, homeowner opposition, and when the process starts, all those folks who have a point of view will have an opportunity to be heard.”
Who cares what he says? He's on his way out.
At the rally on Boston Common, protesters held signs such as “Natural Gas is Bridge to Nowhere!” and “No Fracking Way!”
Julie Jette, 60, of Dracut, called the proposal “dangerous” and said she worried about potential leaks.
“At my age, I don’t want to leave behind the mess we have made,” she said. “I’d like to leave the planet in better shape.”
John Hutchinson-Lavin, 66, is concerned the pipeline could pass through his property in Ashby and argued that much of the demand for natural gas could be met by reducing leaks from existing pipelines.
He and others said they expected much of the gas would eventually be exported.
That's what third-world, resource-rich countries that have desperate poverty and yawning wealth inequality look like.
“This pipeline isn’t necessary,” he said. “It would be terrible.”
Jim Cutler, 59, of Ashfield, said the pipeline would destroy an old tree where his mother’s ashes are buried and cut a 100-foot swath through his land.
He said he was disappointed that the administration and lawmakers were not doing more to block the proposal.
“We do not have a crisis in energy,” he said. “We have a crisis in leadership.”
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Related: Power Protests
And the protests against Israel sweeping nations throughout the world?
Nothing about it in my Boston Globe, not one word, and that is perfectly understandable. The calls for boycott, either.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
Managers dividing time on picket lines, in stores
Market Basket director’s tweet draws criticism
To understand Market Basket feud, head to Lowell
