Market Basket Workers Call for Boycott

Many of 71-store supermarket chain's 25,000 employees urging shoppers to stay away until fired CEO Arthur T. Demoulas is replaced

Five days into a bitter new standoff between its new leadership and its 25,000 employees, Market Basket was in open revolt Tuesday, with picketing workers urging shoppers to boycott its 71 stores.

Their goal: Inflict enough damage on the chain's estimated $80 million a week in sales that directors allied with Arthur S. Demoulas will reinstate his hated cousin, Arthur T. Demoulas, whom Arthur S. succeeded in having fired as CEO last month after decades of bitter feuding.

"We want to hit them where it hurts, which is with customer loyalty and with the pocketbook," Lisa Adams, who's worked for Market Basket since 1989, said as she gathered signatures on a pro-Arthur T. petition from shoppers outside the Burlington store where she works.

Samantha Perkins, protesting outside the Wilmington Market Basket, said: "We're just going to keep fighting, keep boycotting, and see what we can do to get Arthur T. back."

Around the region, stores that customarily average over $1 million a day in sales were eerily empty. Produce sections were vast empty wastelands and meat departments had hundreds of feet of empty shelves, reflecting delivery and warehouse workers refusing to work. Weirdly, other aisles of the stores, like bread, snacks, and dairy, were brimming with product because those are restocked daily by non-Market Basket deliverers from the bakeries, dairies, and snack distributors.

"We're hoping that nobody shops here to send a message to the board," refrigeration technician Marcus Patterson said as he demonstrated outside the company headquarters and distribution center in Tewksbury. "We want them to know that we want our boss back, and that's all we're asking for. That's it."

Aside from a statement justifying the firings of 8 veteran supervisors they said were fomenting protests by workers, new co-CEOs Jim Gooch and Felicia Thornton have made no comment on the multiple demonstrations, boycott campaign, and call for Arthur T. Demoulas's reinstatement. The board of directors, now controlled by the Arthur S. Demoulas ownership faction, is reportedly meeting Friday, and protesting employees hope by then they'll see enough of a hit to their bottom line they'll agree to bring back Arthur T. Demoulas.

"These two people come in for four weeks, and they're going to fire people who've been here for 40 years," Perkins said. "That is not in the best interests of the company at all. That's saying that they're going to do whatever it takes to destroy the company and sell it off to help line their own pockets."

With videographer Daniel J. Ferrigan

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