Brickley’s report came just as the first wave of A&P store clo­sures hit areas of New York, New Jer­sey and Penn­syl­va­nia, with about 2,500 gro­cery work­ers los­ing their jobs. The news had spe­cial impact for those union work­ers who had their con­trac­tu­al sev­er­ance ben­e­fits cut by about half by order of Judge Robert Drain of the U.S. Bank­rupt­cy Court for the South­ern Dis­trict of New York. Judge Drain ordered the cuts at the request of senior A&P man­agers, who had com­plained that the work­er sev­er­ance would be too cost­ly for the company.

Wall Street Jour­nal reporter Peg Brick­ley uncov­ered part of the truth Sep­tem­ber 18, with a dis­patch that revealed A&P ​“paid out $9.4 mil­lion in bonus­es and oth­er extra pay­ments to insid­ers in the 12 months before its July bank­rupt­cy. Brickley’s sto­ry, based on doc­u­ments filed in fed­er­al bank­rupt­cy court, detailed that these pay­ments were made to just eight A&P busi­ness exec­u­tives, and that the com­pa­ny had tak­en the unusu­al step of con­ceal­ing the names of the insid­ers who took the money.

Work­ers at the bank­rupt A&P gro­cery chain have been com­plain­ing for weeks that cor­po­rate exec­u­tives have been loot­ing the fail­ing com­pa­ny, but nobody seemed to be pay­ing much atten­tion until Wall Street’s favorite news­pa­per came out with a sto­ry back­ing up the work­ers’ charges.

The sweet­heart pay­ments to A&P exec­u­tives just adds insult to injury, sources at the Unit­ed Food & Com­mer­cial Work­ers (UFCW) union say, as 15,000 or more union mem­bers are expect­ed to lose their jobs this year as the com­pa­ny sells or clos­es its 300 stores spread out among six Mid-Atlantic states. Firm num­bers on job loss­es are hard to pin down right now, accord­ing to UFCW, because an unde­ter­mined num­ber of stores are expect­ed to remain open under new own­er­ship. At the time of the July bank­rupt­cy fil­ing, A&P stat­ed it had 28,500 employ­ees and that it expect­ed that about 12,500 jobs could be saved by the pre-arranged sale of about 120 stores to oth­er gro­cery chain operators.

Rela­tions between the union and A&P man­agers have dete­ri­o­rat­ed steadi­ly since the bank­rupt­cy court fil­ing, says Har­vey Whille, Pres­i­dent of UFCW Local 1262 in Clifton, New Jer­sey. The com­pa­ny received bank­rupt­cy court per­mis­sion to cut sev­er­ance ben­e­fits for the first wave of the store clos­ings, he tells In These Times, and is now back in court seek­ing per­mis­sion to cut ben­e­fits for the rest of the employ­ees who will lose their jobs

“Now, we have no future,” with A&P, Whille says, and the union expects to go to court in Octo­ber to fight any fur­ther cuts. Asked whether he expect­ed Judge Drain to con­tin­ue to rule in A&P’s favor against the union work­ers, Whille replies, ​“I expect the judge to move in that direction.”

The judge did just that in a legal fight over a pro­pos­al by A&P to spend anoth­er $5 mil­lion for a ​“Key Employ­ee Reten­tion Pro­gram,” or KERP, Whille says. The $5 mil­lion was to be divid­ed among about 500 non-union man­agers and staff for the pur­pose of pro­vid­ing an incen­tive for those peo­ple to remain on the job till Decem­ber, when those jobs too will be elim­i­nat­ed. ​“They just keep say­ing ​‘Line my pock­ets’ some more,” Whille comments.

After loud objec­tions from UFCW and the Ser­vice Employ­ees Inter­na­tion­al Union (which has a small col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing unit at A&P), Judge Drain allowed the KERP pay­ments to go for­ward, although he reduced the amount to $3.9 million.

All of this legal activ­i­ty at the cour­t­house has been tak­ing place as Judge Drain has been receiv­ing scores of let­ters from dis­placed work­ers com­plain­ing about unfair treat­ment. Typ­i­cal is this from There­sa A. Brown, an employ­ee at the A&P‑owned Path­mark store is Aston, Pennsylvania:

A&P has suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed what they set out to do; Bank­rupt Path­mark stores and weak­en the unions. The com­pa­ny tells the court that its pay­roll was unsus­tain­able but they did not tell you that we asso­ciates 3 years ago gave in to con­ces­sions to help rebuild the com­pa­ny. We gave back 7.5% of our income, no rais­es for 5 years. 1 week vaca­tion, 3 per­son­al hol­i­days and 2 paid hol­i­days. Which came to over $625 mil­lion! What did they give up? NOTH­ING! Then they have the nerve to peti­tion the courts for $5 mil­lion for them to pay non-union asso­ciates to retain them. REALLY! So they want to give rais­es to all the peo­ple who made the bad deci­sions that is caus­ing this once GREAT com­pa­ny to be forced into BANK­RUPT­CY! They were the ones who raised prices to such out­ra­geous amounts that forced our loy­al cus­tomers and asso­ciates to shop else­where. I did price changes one day and they increased a box of trash bags by $5 a box mak­ing them $15.49 a box…. So I am ask­ing Hon­or­able Judge Drain not to give in to A&P request.

UFCW Local 1262’s Whille says he believes the union-spon­sored let­ter writ­ing cam­paign, in addi­tion to exten­sive court­room coun­ter­at­tacks from UFCW lawyers, have been effec­tive in win­ning some gains for union work­ers. A&P, for exam­ple had asked Judge Drain to cut sev­er­ance pay­ments to union work­ers to only 25 per­cent of the con­trac­tu­al amounts, but he set­tled on 52 per­cent as a fair­er number.

“It’s not as much as it should be, but we’re fight­ing for every inch,” he says. Those efforts notwith­stand­ing he esti­mate that the cen­tral New Jer­sey local will lose about 1,200 mem­bers when the A&P bank­rupt­cy plan is complete.