Economics Professor Richard D. Wolff weighs in on the outcome of the Market Basket feud tonight in a rebroacast of his Economic Update broadcast from Thursday night.
WHAV, which first brought the battle to Wolff’s attention in July, airs the Pacifica Network program at 8 p.m., tonight.
“It’s a lesson isn’t it about what can be done? It is a lesson of the power of working people—they won. The faction that supports working people is back in charge,” Wolff says, summarizing the result of associates’ picketing and customers boycotting the supermarket chain.
Wolff describes the events.
“The family is split into two factions. One faction basically wanted to take the profits and make themselves rich and the other faction…was more interested in providing profit sharing to workers, supporting and building in the communities being served by this company
“And then something very interesting happened. Workers decided they weren’t going to simply let a family fight among the owners—a handful of people after all—to determine the life experience, the economic well being of not only the thousands of employees of this company, but of all the communities served by this company and so the workers began to protest to show they wanted it to go back to Arthur T. rather than Arthur S. Demoulas.
Wolff is professor of economics emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a visiting professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan.
Earlier he taught economics at Yale University (1967-1969) and at the City College of the City University of New York (1969-1973). In 1994, he was a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Paris (France), I (Sorbonne).