A. & P. Exodus

In the vegetable-calm existence of a chain grocery store a housewife's dissatisfaction with her cantaloupes may be considered a major misfortune. Last week in Cleveland organized Labor gave the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co.'s 300 stores a taste of real trouble. Unions began picketing the company's warehouses. Trucks hauling merchandise from warehouse to store were halted. "Flying squadrons" rolled from one red-fronted store to another, growling "close up or we'll come back and close you." A few plate-glass windows got cracked. Meat Cutters', Bakers' and Retail Clerks' & Managers' Unions called strikes against A. & P. demanding closed shop.

Although most A. & P. store employes belonged to no union, the Cleveland Federation of Labor had the whip-hand, for if no goods were delivered to stores, business was at a standstill. Chairman George L. Hartford of A. & P. went to Cleveland and took a decision. On Saturday night all A. & P. employes in Cleveland, 2,200, were paid off, for good. In full page advertisements A. & P. announced that it was leaving Cleveland where it had been in business for 50 years.

A union official snapped. "Frankly, I don't believe it." Many another observer, considering the 300 stakes to be pulled up, suspected a bluff. Fact was, A. & P. was well prepared to make good its threat. Since pre-Depression days, A. & P.'s policy has been to take only one year leases on stores. In Cleveland 93% of its leases were reported to be of that kind. To stamp out a virus which might quickly spread from Atlantic to Pacific, a company with 15,427 stores could well afford to abandon an infected 300.

Chairman Hartford boarded a train and turned his back on Cleveland. Next morning while the Cleveland union fumed and the unorganized store managers and clerks protested the loss of their jobs, organized labor transferred the struggle to Wisconsin and Milwaukee. There the Meat Cutters' & Butchers' Union ordered a strike in 26 A. & P. stores--and, for good measure, in the Kroger Grocery stores as well.

Oldsters thought back twelve years and conceived A. & P.'s exodus as not improbable. They recalled another truckmen's strike in Jersey City, N. J. that closed A. & P.'s warehouse and distributing station. They stayed closed, their activities were transferred to Manhattan. The Hartford family who own A. & P. almost as securely as Henry Ford owns his business, are equally capable of taking drastic action. While the National Labor Relations Board summoned them and the unions to Washington, with a six-point peace plan offered by the Cleveland Regional Labor Board up for discussion, packers were already at work preparing the goods in A. & P.'s Cleveland warehouses for shipment to other cities.

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