Somerville, MA, Aug. 12, 2014 – The manager, and customers, at the Somerville Avenue Market Basket say they continue to support the return of Arthur T. Demoulas as head of the 71-store supermarket chain.
“The employees are not going to work for anyone else,” store director Michael Dunleavy told Somerville Neighborhood News in an Aug. 8 interview. “I’m hoping that the board… will come up with a resolution to get him back, the way we want it, which is ultimately for him to be running the company, the way he always has. He treats the customers great, best benefits, best salaries, best pay in the supermarket industry. That’s what we’re fighting for.”
Dunleavy started working for Market Basket at age 15, bagging groceries in Billerica at store number 17. Over the past 36 years, he’s worked his way up through the ranks, spending most of the past 16 years as a store director in Somerville, he said.
“I’ve been here so long that – nothing against Mayor Curtatone – but I’m probably the next known face in Somerville for all the customers that shop here for so long,” he joked.
Normally, the Somerville Avenue store is one of the top ten stores overall for sales and is usually the highest-earning store by square feet, since most of the newer stores are double its size, according Dunleavy.
But on a recent afternoon, the store and the parking lot were nearly empty. Dunleavy said the number of customers is down from 35,000 shoppers a week – about 5,000 per day – to about 5,000 a week. The store is running at a loss.
Market Basket functions mostly with part-time labor and only promotes from within, so each of the chain’s 71 store managers started as a part-time employee in one of the stores, Dunleavy said. That means that each of the Somerville store’s 325 part-time workers has a chance at a future full-time career with the company.
But next week, they won’t be working at the store at all.
“They’re not fired; I didn’t lay them off,” Dunleavy explained. “But they have no schedule for next week.”
The Market Basket corporate office sets a minimum amount of business that must take place for each scheduled employee hour. Dunleavy is worried. With business the way it is right now, he doesn’t think the store will make payroll next week even with the cuts. But, he said, he won’t cut his 75 full-time employee’s hours, because he wants them to receive their benefits.
“I hope it’s over soon,” Dunleavy said. “I never thought it would get to this point.”
Market Basket’s employees aren’t the only ones wishing for an end to this conflict. Many members of the Somerville community rely on the store’s low prices for their weekly grocery shopping.
Anil Subedi moved to Somerville a month ago. August 8 marked his first visit to the store, but noted he’d often heard about it.
“The price is cheap,” Subedi said. “We get lots of things here, and it is very useful for people around here. I heard that when Market Basket has problems, many people have problems.”
Carmen Ayala has been coming to Somerville’s Market Basket for many years. She said she appreciates the fact that it carries diverse foods that are crucial to the cuisines of many countries.
“I want it to bring back, because all the other stores are too expensive. Market Basket has good prices,” she explained. “Many people use the Market Basket because you save a lot of money. It’s very important.”
While Michael Quirk now lives in Cambridge, he was born in Somerville in 1943. Today, he comes back to his hometown just to go to the Market Basket.
“I’ve seen a lot of stores come and go, and I’ve seen a lot of different people come and go in this city,” he explained. “Most of them are not the money crowd that you might find in Cambridge, who don’t care what the price of food is. They don’t even know it; they don’t even look at the price tag when they buy an item. I do.”
Quirk noted that even though Market Basket is known for its low prices, the quality of the products competes with more expensive supermarkets.
“That’s why we come to Market Basket,” he said. “We’re all behind the workers who want this Mr. T. I don’t even know what the middle initial stands for, but I know it stands for something better than we’ll get if we don’t get Mr. T and this place is sold for 2 or 3 billion dollars.”
As of August 12, the Market Basket board of directors and Arthur T. Demoulas were still in negotiations about Demoulas’ offer to buy the company.
The conflict started weeks ago when the board of directors removed Arthur T. Demoulas as CEO. Since then, thousands of workers, drivers, customers and supporters have boycotted, demonstrated, signed petitions, ‘liked’ a Facebook page, donated to a drivers fund and made statements demanding the reinstatement of their CEO, whom they call simply “Arthur T.”
