First on the chop­ping block are 1,018 work­ers at 10 stores in Penn­syl­va­nia and New Jer­sey whose jobs will be ter­mi­nat­ed Sep­tem­ber 19, accord­ing to offi­cial notices filed with state labor agen­cies. Those job cuts are to be fol­lowed in short order by an addi­tion­al 15 store clos­ings in Penn­syl­va­nia, New York and Delaware, where about 1,500 addi­tion­al gro­cery work­ers will be forced on to the unem­ploy­ment lines in the next two to three months, court doc­u­ments detail.

The mass fir­ings of work­ers at the A&P super­mar­ket chain is set to begin in mid-Sep­tem­ber, fol­low­ing action this week by a fed­er­al bank­rupt­cy court approv­ing a plan to quick­ly shed some 2,500 jobs at the ail­ing gro­cery retail­er. The job cuts are a first step in a broad­er plan to dis­mem­ber the entire 300-store chain, with expect­ed job loss­es of 15,000 or more.

Adding insult to injury, A&P man­agers met with lead­ers of the Unit­ed Food & Com­mer­cial Work­ers (UFCW) union last week to inform them that the com­pa­ny did not intend to hon­or exist­ing col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments, union offi­cers told rank-and-file mem­bers. (The con­tracts cov­er work­ers at sev­er­al chains owned by A&P, includ­ing A&P, Path­mark, Wald­baums, Super­fresh, and oth­ers.) Dis­card­ed work­ers may be denied sev­er­ance and vaca­tion pay, senior­i­ty rules are to be ignored, and a long list of oth­er uni­lat­er­al con­tract changes must be accept­ed by the union, accord­ing to an announce­ment from Har­vey Whille, Pres­i­dent of UFCW Local 1262 in Clifton, N.J. A&P man­agers demand­ed that the union offi­cers accede to con­ces­sions, accord­ing to Whille’s state­ment, oth­er­wise the com­pa­ny would go to court to have the con­tracts revised or can­celled by the judge.

Both A&P and UFCW were tight lipped when con­tact­ed by In These Times for addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion and com­ment. A&P spokesper­son Bri­an Shiv­er would only say ​“we’re not com­ment­ing.” UFCW Region 1 Direc­tor Tom Clarke, who heads a coali­tion of 12 UFCW locals with A&P con­tracts, did not respond to phone calls or e‑mail messages.

But the mes­sage of eco­nom­ic pain is get­ting through loud and clear to the check-out clerks, pro­duce han­dlers, meat cut­ters, bak­ery work­ers, and oth­er employ­ees who run the stores on a day-to-day basis.

Lin­da Mal­oney, a 14-year vet­er­an of a Path­mark store in Wilm­ing­ton, Delaware, showed up at work July 20 to learn that A&P had filed for bank­rupt­cy that day, and that the the store would be closed in 90 days. No oth­er infor­ma­tion was forth­com­ing from the store man­agers, she tells In These Times, but the union rep­re­sen­ta­tive from UFCW Local 27 informed her that her sev­er­ance and vaca­tion pay was in dan­ger, as were her senior­i­ty rights to be trans­ferred to anoth­er Path­mark store. ​“We don’t know any­thing. We are wait­ing,” for reli­able infor­ma­tion, she says.

Mal­oney decid­ed to write to Judge Robert Drain, who presided over A&P’s first bank­rupt­cy reor­ga­ni­za­tion in 2010 – 2012, and is now hand­ing the company’s sec­ond bank­rupt­cy case:

I am writ­ing you today so you are aware that nor­mal work­ing peo­ple are affect­ed in the Bank­rupt­cy of A&P. In the last Bank­rupt­cy, we, Local 27 UFCW, gave up 7.5 per­cent of our pay, gave back a weeks vaca­tion, two per­son­nel days, and gave back two hol­i­days in good faith to make this com­pa­ny stronger. But the exec­u­tives either not know­ing how or not car­ing to learn how to run a gro­cery store kept giv­ing them­selves bonus­es. For their last, the exec­u­tives, gave them­selves a mega bonus, then days lat­er filed for bank­rupt­cy. This is leav­ing us, the work­ers, strug­gling, with no income or ben­e­fits. How is this legal? I am sure that the exec­u­tives of A&P are sit­ting pret­ty and not car­ing at all about us. I guess I hope that you will think of us, the work­ers, who are most affect­ed by this action. Most of us have worked most if not all of our lives for Pathmark.

Mal­oney says she didn’t get a response from Judge Drain, nor did she expect one. The first 2010 – 2012 A&P bank­rupt­cy result­ed in about 10,000 A&P work­ers los­ing their jobs, with all the remain­ing union work­ers tak­ing some cuts in pay or ben­e­fits. And after all that, it did not seem that A&P man­agers had any clear plan to restore the chain to health, she says. The man­agers didn’t seem to know what they were doing, she offers, and ​“it seemed like they want­ed us to fail.”

In a dec­la­ra­tion to the court dat­ed July 19, A&P Chief Admin­is­tra­tive Offi­cer Christo­pher McGar­ry stat­ed that the com­pa­ny cur­rent­ly employs 28,500 peo­ple. About 93 per­cent of these work­ers are rep­re­sent­ed by unions, almost all of whom are UFCW locals. There are 35 sep­a­rate col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing agree­ments with 12 dif­fer­ent UFCW locals.

A&P intends to move quick­ly to sell or close all of its stores, he con­tin­ued. Ini­tial arrange­ments have been made to sell 120 stores to oth­er gro­cery retail­ers in the region, and one of the poten­tial buy­ers, ACME Mar­kets, issued a state­ment stat­ing that it intend­ed to buy 76 stores in the expec­ta­tion that sale would be approved by Oct. 15.

Alto­geth­er, the 120 stores already lined up for sale employ some 12,500 union work­ers, McGar­ry stat­ed. (No plans for the con­tin­ued employ­ment of the remain­ing 13,000 work­ers have been made pub­lic). Labor con­tracts for these work­ers must be rene­go­ti­at­ed in order for the sales to go through, he assert­ed. Exist­ing senior­i­ty rights and oth­er ben­e­fits of the exist­ing con­tracts must be elim­i­nat­ed through nego­ti­a­tion, he stat­ed. McGar­ry then explic­it­ly threat­ened the UFCW: ​“To the extent the Debtors (A&P) and the unions do not reach agree­ment on these mod­i­fi­ca­tions with­in the req­ui­site time frame…the Debtors…(will) file a motion for tem­po­rary relief from the Court pur­suant to sec­tion 1113(e) of the bank­rupt­cy code and to obtain entry of an order autho­riz­ing such relief with­in 45 days.”

Under Sec­tion 1113, fed­er­al bank­rupt­cy judges are autho­rized to can­cel or mod­i­fy labor union con­tracts, with or with­out the con­sent of the work­ers. The sec­tion of the bank­rupt­cy law has been noto­ri­ous­ly used in the past to bat­ter unions into wage con­ces­sions, job cuts and oth­er givebacks.

In his state­ment to the mem­bers, UFCW Local 1262’s Whille was defi­ant in the face of the A&P threats. ​“We will fight as hard as we can to pro­tect what you have earned and deserve, and will do every­thing in our pow­er to make The A&P Com­pa­ny hon­or their respon­si­bil­i­ties to every Path­mark mem­ber and their family.”