BIDDEFORD — Starting next week, the 270 part-time employees at the Biddeford Market Basket grocery store, which is the majority of the total staff of 330, will not be working. Although they will officially remain store employees, they will have no scheduled hours.
Biddeford Store Manager Micum McIntire said he was told to reduce the amount of employees working due to the significant drop in customers. On Wednesday, he was talking to his part-time staff to let them know there was no work for them until further notice.
“It’s the worst thing I’ve ever done,” he said. “It’s very upsetting.”
According to a statement from the company’s co-CEOs, Felicia Thornton and James Gooch, “store directors were not instructed to lay off associates, but to adjust hours to meet current demand. It is our hope that we will be back to normal business levels in the not too distant future and all associates will be back to a full schedule.”
Walking into the Biddeford Market Basket store on Wednesday offered a very different sight from just three weeks ago.
Before, the store, which averaged 24,000 customers a week, was booming, but on Wednesday, there were only a handful of customers. There were more employees than those shopping the aisles.
Shoppers who stopped by were greeted by a sign on the entrance door asking them to shop elsewhere. Those who entered anyway found that many of the grocery shelves were bare.
The Biddeford store isn’t an anomaly.
The sight is similar to that which can be found at all 71 stores of the once popular New England grocery chain. The other stores are in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
The reason for the empty stores is a situation unique in American business, according to industry analysts.
Hundreds of employees have left their job in protest, not against working conditions, which they claim to enjoy, but against the firing of the company’s former CEO Arthur T. Demoulas.
The workers say they won’t return until he is reinstated. Those who remain on the job also say they are loyal to Arthur T.
Arthur T. was fired in June after he lost control of the company’s board of directors to his rival and cousin Arthur S. Demoulas.
While Arthur T. has offered to buy the remaining 50.5 percent of company shares his side of the family doesn’t already own, statements from the board have said they are reviewing their options and other bids.
According to the Boston Globe on Wednesday, Hannaford Bros. Co.’s Belgium-based parent company, Delhaize Group SA, has also made a bid to purchase part or all of the chain.
Michael Norton, director of community relations for Delhaize, would not confirm the bid, saying the group “does not comment on rumors or speculation regarding plans to acquire or divest businesses.”
One of those who found out she wouldn’t be working next week was Elizabeth Larose of Biddeford.
Larose was hired in May 2013, before the new store even opened. Along with a few hundred others, she took a school bus back and forth from Biddeford to New Hampshire throughout the summer for training at other Market Basket stores.
The Biddeford store opened last August.
Larose, who is a part-time cashier, said she averaged 15-20 hours a week at the store. Economically, she said, the loss of her paycheck will hurt. Especially, she said, since her husband works for a vendor who supplies Market Basket. His hours are also being cut because deliveries to the store were about one-third of his business.
In addition to missing her paycheck, said Larose, she’ll miss her job.
“I’ve worked at different jobs for 40 years,” she said, “this is the best job I’ve ever had. Everyone’s happy to work here. The camaraderie with the management here is unlike any I’ve ever encountered.
“We are a team and everyone is acknowledged as a valued part of the team,” said Larose. “It’s a shame this is happening.”
At the same time some workers’ hours are being cut, the company has been holding job fairs to fill some vacant positions. On Monday and Tuesday, existing employees could apply for different positions and on Wednesday the public was invited to apply.
Protesters have been outside of the job fair so the company supplied an email address where people who were intimidated by the protesters can send applications.
— Staff Writer Dina Mendros can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 324 or dmendros@journaltribune.com.
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