October 26, 2009 07:12 PM UTC

"Risky" For Who, Exactly?

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• by: Colorado Pols

As we’ve followed the buildup to the present labor dispute between King Soopers, Safeway and Albertson’s stores and their United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) employees, we’ve taken an interest in technological and other developments since the last big strike that might change the game. In particular, we’ve found the efforts of a local liberal advocacy group to inform consumers about alternative shopping locations they can patronize in the event of a strike to be rather innovative–as we’ve said we can’t predict what the outcome will be, but ubiquitous dissemination of information online is a factor that didn’t exist back in 1996.

Keep in mind also that local media may not have an incentive to be helpful to union workers as this strike nears: the Denver Post is heavily dependent on advertising revenue from major grocers, in addition to having shown itself to be notoriously, over-the-top anti-labor editorially in recent years.

So it should come as no surprise that when the Post finally picked up on efforts to help grocery workers (and sympathetic consumers), their first instinct was to spin the story out of all recognition. Here’s today’s article–it was originally titled “Grocery shift: Effort for union risky,” though we see that was changed at about 7:45 this morning:

An advocacy group’s efforts to throw its support behind unionized grocery workers actually directs consumers to shop at non-union establishments.

The unusual step by ProgressNow Colorado is designed to bring pressure on King Soopers, City Market, Albertsons and Safeway stores – where more than 17,000 unionized workers are without a contract – by showing consumers the doors to alternative retailers.

Those retailers, according to an early view of the group’s website locator map, tend to be stores where unions are not represented, such as Target, Costco and Whole Foods.

In an economy where supermarkets battle with discount, no-frills stores for every consumer dollar, industry analysts say it’s one thing to tell consumers to shop elsewhere and quite another to show them. [Pols emphasis]

“Competitors are the only ones to win in that strategy,” said Andrew Wolf, an industry analyst for BB&T Capital Markets in Virginia. “It takes much, much longer to recoup lost customers.”

That was the case in Southern California when a supermarket chain owned by Kroger, which also owns King Soopers and City Market, reeled over the losses from a 4 1/2 month strike that ended in February 2004, costing them more than $2 billion… [Pols emphasis]

“That behavior had not yet started when the California strike happened, so going to a different store wasn’t that easily accepted,” said Phil Lempert, editor of SupermarketGuru.com. “Now it’s already in place because of the down economy. Unlike California, I don’t think they’ll ever get their customers back. It could backfire big time.”

Laying it on pretty damn thick here, folks–for one thing, there are still far more King Soopers, Safeway and Albertson’s stores, distributed far more widely into Colorado suburban neighborhoods. Consumers who choose to honor a strike will certainly return to those stores once the dispute ends: they’ll do so for the convenience, low prices, and excellent customer service the unionized stores provide. The fact is that the growth of nonunion grocery departments in discount stores, by the look of Kroger’s profits so far this year, hasn’t cut meaningfully into their bottom line.

Though we’re guessing that months-long strike in California did! This liberal organization isn’t giving directions to alternative stores to hurt union workers, obviously–they’re helping customers avoid picket lines. Isn’t it just possible that all the handwringing in this article from “industry analysts,” the laughable as-if concern trolling about ‘nonunion stores’ mirroring what we saw in King Soopers’ management letter to employees last week, might actually begin and end with the words “$2 billion in losses?”

Bottom line: there are “risks” inherent to any high-stakes negotiations, but our view of the present labor dispute, and this ridiculously spun Post story in particular, suggests that Kroger, Safeway and Albertson’s management are becoming aware of “risks” to their own position that they may not have adequately accounted for.