The Market Basket board of directors put CEO Arthur T. Demoulas on leave this week. The board said he was planning a work stoppage at Market Basket stores and also demanded that his children be named successors to the grocery store chain when he retires. Demoulas says his ousting is a hostile takeover by the board.
All of this is bringing back memories for many Granite Staters of the 2014 Market Basket boycott that lasted six weeks, when employees and customers supported Demoulas in another power struggle at the company.
NHPR’s Morning Edition host Rick Ganley spoke with Portsmouth filmmaker Jay Childs, who captured the 2014 turmoil in his documentary, “Food Fight – Inside the Battle for Market Basket.”
Transcript
The news this week that Arthur T. Demoulas is out at Market Basket, or put on administrative leave according to the company's board of directors, is giving us a lot of deja vu. Can you remind us of what happened back in 2014 that started a boycott?
Leading up to that, the company had been operating quite smoothly. What happened was there's two cousins, Arthur S. and Arthur T., who were representative of -- the father's name was Telemachus or Mike, and he had a brother, George. When George passed away -- [these are] the original owners of the company. When George passed away, the heirs were George's kids, Arthur S. and there were Mike's kids, represented by Arthur T. And as of 2013, actually one of the shareholder family members switched their vote effectively, which gave control of the company and the board to Arthur S. side of the family. And with that, they exerted that control and fired Arthur T. Demoulas as the CEO.
And how did customers and employees respond to the turmoil at the time?
So there was a lot of confusion at first, but most of the employees were very firm that they were not going to work for anybody else but Arthur T. Demoulas. And so as 2013 turned into 2014, we end up with essentially a walkout of the home office of the headquarters, which then led to customers deciding to boycott the stores in order to either bring Arthur T. Demoulas back or essentially drive the company into the ground.
And there [were] protests and, of course, customers helping in those protests. How did that all resolve?
So after many contentious meetings that were both held and canceled, there finally in late August was an agreement to sell a majority stake of the company to Arthur T.'s side for about $1.6 billion.
Jay, it's not every CEO who inspires this kind of loyalty. What is it about Arthur T. that draws so much support from people who work at Market Basket?
I went back and reviewed some of the interviews from the film that I did, and it really came down to this ethos that he has or has had of no job in the company is more important than the other, and everyone has dignity and everyone should be treated well — first and foremost, the customer. I mean, the employees have had this ingrained into their brains that we're in the people business first, we're in the grocery business second. [And] that they hold on to sort of those older values. There's no self checkout, and it's a very relationship oriented supermarket business.
We've heard rumblings about some possible boycotts from customers this time around, but so far we haven't seen any planned walkouts at Market Basket. What are you hearing from some of your sources who work in the stores now?
Full disclosure, I haven't had a lot, but I have heard that right now there's confusion, a lot of confusion. It's very early in this happening. Most of what I've heard is that on the employee side, they stick firmly with Arthur T. Demoulas. However, this time I think a lot of the reaction combined with that concern is 'Really this again?' And a feeling that after things were resolved in 2014 between Arthur S.' side and Arthur T.'s side, that this might be the end of it. And well, here we are.
