Author: admin

We left off yesterday’s post about the Basket case at the end of the kerfluffle spanning the ’90s with the stripper, the fraud, and the blackmail. Seriously, go read that part if you haven’t, but don’t come after me for migraine pills, I used them all up writing it.

So what does Market Basket’s checkered family past have to do with what’s going on today, and why the hell doesn’t the Basket have any salad fixings at all?

Nothin’ left but some melons and an artistically placed Gloucester Clam sticker, naturally.

You may recall that yesterday, I explained that Mike’s son, Arthur T Demoulas, was involved with his father’s legal team and the whole “secret recordings” and “blackmail a court employee” debacle. He’s the center of today’s fight, having just been ousted as CEO. It’s complicated. Of course. Like everything else involving the name “Demoulas”.

Anyway, after the lawsuits of the ’90s into the ’00s shake out, the judge forces Mike’s side of the family to give up 51% of Market Basket to George’s side. Mike’s side of the family lost the lawsuits pretty soundly – it’s hard to excuse flagrant fraud, forgery, and hiding assets from your family.

Back in early 2008, Market Basket’s board votes Arthur T Demoulas in as CEO. He is by all accounts a pretty reasonable guy who is hell-bent on treating his employees like family. Or, better than family, seeing as how the Demoulas family has beaten up and defrauded each other for decades now and OSHA and the Department of Labor aren’t keen on doing that to produce clerks.

Artie D is so reasonable that during the economic downturn, his profit-sharing employee account loses $46m in a quarter and he REPLACES THOSE FUNDS with his own company’s profits so his employees don’t suffer. This is relatively unheard of -all investment is risky, after all, and most people in America lost money from pensions or 401ks in 2008. This move majorly pisses off his cousins on George’s side of the family, who like things like “profits” and whatnot.

For five years, Arthur T Demoulas, despite his side of the family’s past shady and questionable tactics, is a beloved CEO to his workers. He is described as an affable, friendly, and humble leader. He pays well, employees have good health insurance. Workers trust him and are fervently loyal to him.

But in the summer of 2013, Arthur T’s cousin, George’s son Arthur S Demoulas, gains control of Market Basket’s board and calls a vote to oust Arthur T amid claims and a lawsuit that alleged he mismanaged the company, engaged in improper business deals with companies owned by his wife and her family, and withheld important information from the board. Meanwhile, Arthur S’s side has long been painted as interested in as much money as possible from their holdings (which explains their anger at Arthur T’s profit-sharing fund placement), without putting in the elbow grease Mike’s family did. This move was seen as a way for George’s side of the family to get dividends from their stock.

There was a massive outpouring of support for Arthur T Demoulas  – employees who had been at Market Basket for decades showed up for the board meeting and stood outside in August heat to support him. During the meeting, the board didn’t oust him, and he saved his job – for a bit. But Arthur S continued to push for his cousin’s dismissal.

Finally, late last month, Arthur T Demoulas was fired as CEO and replaced by a former Radio Shack executive named Jim Gooch (holding back laughter at unfortunate last name there) and Felicia Thorton, former executive at Albertson’s. A few upper level executives were also fired at the same time.

And then the shit hit the fucking fan.  

CAT’S OUT OF THE BAG NOW! haha get it

Remember when I said his employees were fiercely loyal? Well, because unions have fallen out of favor in the states, Market Basket’s employees aren’t unionized. They have no recourse if the new board, in order to boost profits (remember those dividends Arthur S’s family lusted after?), slashes their benefits and profit sharing. Many employees have been with the company for decades – the company is known for promoting from within. They knew that Arthur S’s takeover of the board spelled the end of employee-friendly policies as they knew it, and they were PISSED.

The board couldn’t have predicted the intensity of what came next.  Despite the lack of union, workers started protesting. They threatened to walk off the job if the board didn’t reinstate Arthur T – putting their own blue-collar jobs on the line for one of the state’s richest men. Last Friday, the murmurs of work disruption boiled over into a full-scale revolt – warehouse and store workers showed up at the company’s headquarters to protest despite warnings they’d lose their jobs, meaning Market Basket’s deliveries ground to a screeching halt. It has spiraled from there. Eight workers who organized the protests – supply chain supervisors with the company for 30 or 40 years in some cases – have been fired via a courier service. This has only served to fan the flames. Yesterday, the protests moved to store branches – here in Gloucester, a protest outside the Gloucester Crossing Market Basket grew despite the searing heat.

Protesters outside Gloucester Crossing, 7/21

The protesters here in Gloucester, at least yesterday, are mostly younger folks. Kids for whom Market Basket was their first job. Single moms brought toddlers. My blog partner Jim showed up this afternoon, ostensibly to buy supplies for frittatas and organic beet salad, and instead grabbed some photos and video of the hoopla.

[wpvideo tOODaXOC]

Think about this. It isn’t exactly the Anthracite Coal Strike of 1902, but how often do you see a worker action these days? And one not looking for higher wages or increased benefits, but one in favor of a company leader who the workers felt treated them decently. Here are young people taking a stand for something that is important to them and being pretty goddamned polite and articulate about it. They are risking their jobs. These are kids who are working because they need to, either saving for college or helping out their own families. Their jobs are massively important to them, but doing what they believe is the right thing is more important.

And local politicians are behind them. At last count, 19 local lawmakers had signed a statement in support of boycotting Market Basket. That’s a pretty good gauge of the seriousness of the situation – Market Basket hasn’t done anything illegal or even morally reprehensible, but it’s that serious that Martha Coakley has stood up and supported the workers’ demands to reinstate the CEO.

It’s a pretty engaging situation to be sure, and where it develops from here is anyone’s guess. It’s unlikely Arthur T will be reinstated, but Market Basket’s completely lost control of the situation. Someone get the popcorn and let’s all watch the schadenfreude.

Oh fuck, they sold out of popcorn.

Today’s guest post is from Adam Kuhlmann who explores the Gloucester businessscape if it were freed from the shackles of context.

Tony Tally’s Petroleum World 27 Maplewood Avenue

What it is:

A full-service gas and vehicle inspection station, consisting of four pumps and a repair bay, owned by the patriarch of the Taliadoros family

What it sounds like: 

Michael Bay takes his kids to the Shore

A garish amusement park, endorsed by a NASCAR champion and underwritten by the Saudi royal family, celebrating the wonders of gasoline and related hydrocarbons.  Visitors can seek thrills on a variety of attractions, including Frack Mountain and The Kerosene River, as long as they adhere to the park’s strict no-smoking policy.

Nails Club 50 Maplewood Avenue

 What it is:

A beauty salon staffed by brisk, efficient technicians offering little conversation and a basic pedi for just $26.00.

What it sounds like:

A Berlin discotheque, specializing in a genre of trance music punctuated by the sounds of a construction site.

DJ Safetybarrel rips it, ja?

The Mexican Touch 185 Washington Street

 What it is:

 A take-out restaurant whose frugal menu includes burritos, empanadas, quesadillas, and—claro que sí—Black Forest cake

What it sounds like:

 A storefront in Tijuana that you hustled your kids past, after a fellow in rhinestone chaps tried to lure them inside to take a peek at his burro.

DO NOT look this up on Urban Dictionary…oops, there you go. Suit yourself

G33K 130 Main Street

 What it is:

A retailer of every type of game and game accessory, including costumes of Xbox characters immediately recognizable by the palest 1% of the population

What it sounds like: 

An internet start-up that, in an ill-conceived attempt to summon disruptive innovation, you enlisted your 16-month-old niece to brand.  Clutching your tablet computer in her sticky hands, she swatted at these four characters.

A cat would have also worked for this gag

Raf’s Bait Wagon Transient

What it is:

A gentleman with a handlebar mustache who has modified his weather-beaten van so that he can cut, store, sell, and advertise fresh herring

What it sounds like:

See above.

Pretty much

Once again, the Clamticians have implored me to delve into the viscera of my creative faculties to expose an aspect of reality best explored via the unshackled mode of the visual arts. Today I am departing from my usual format and medium in an effort to expand modalities while at the same time embracing the lure of the literal.

Evidently, Clamedia International LTD is receiving an unprecedented number of angry and/or perplexed demands for an explanation as to why we have chosen a member of genus Capra (see below)

as opposed to Crassostrea (or phylum mollusca for that matter) to represent our corporate identity.

To be honest, we are all at a loss for words. We had an excessively heated and disastrously long argument about how best to ‘explain’ to our dedicated readers the significance of our choice. We came to blows, but then, we always do at corporate functions.

After a shit-ton of Jello™ shots and a few peyote buttons, I managed to ‘phase out’ long enough to pen this missive. In an effort to dispel any misinterpretations, I will approach the solution to this complex mystery with a straightforward answer.

Gloucester Gothic, Goat Simulator, 2014

Ever since Kline’s voyeuristic prequel to Warhol’s ongoing and self-proclaimed sham, the art world has mourned the death of the avant-garde. Serious, exuberant discourse has given way to the absurd and to a complete loss of cultural identity. Like the universe’s first milliseconds, we are in an age where matter(the object) and energy(critical thought) are interchangeable and unfocused. There have been repeated attempts to coalesce this dark matter into something bold and philosophically evolved, but the results thus far have only been a series of commodifiable, and predictably inscestuous hacks. The art world exists for its own sake alone.

Yves Kline happening, 1960

Now, the deterministic nature of the image is counteracted by the mind’s inability to filter the synaptic misfirings we equate with the miasma of non-linear and inchoate, pre-determinate metaphors. It is a fugue state from which we can never recover. The Image is continuously replaced by facsimiles of itself, branching fractally through iterations of the real only to be undone by it’s own interconnectedness with space-time. In effect, the object becomes that which it is not by revealing its underlying false self, only to be reborn again as infinitely variable simulacra.

Grazing, Goat Simulator, 2014

Cultural indifference to or complete unawareness of humor has it’s roots in fascism. The right has usurped the left by implementing the chauvinistic mechanisms of design and appropriating ontological realms hither-to associated with anarchic ideologies. Humor has the potential to disrupt our concept of what is true while simultaneously exposing reality subversively, operating on the audience’s preconceptions to [de]construct a new, accepted norm. The sheep, or goats as it were, are in wolves’ clothing, ideology is dead, and humor must prevail.

Ascension, Goat Simulator, 2014