• Your View: Market Basket workers take too much risk

  • "When elephants fight, mice get crushed." In the Market Basket controversy, this statement seems all too obvious.
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    The worst thing that occurred in the Market Basket feud was the walking out of employees. Not all of the employees took to the picket lines, but for those who did, a decision was made. By walking off of their jobs and onto the picket lines, employees essentially made their own bed, in that they were going to get what they wanted or risk destroying their livelihood.
    It should come as no surprise to employees that by killing the supply chain and encouraging customers to shop elsewhere would essentially kill the chain in the event that the conflict was unresolvable in a week's time.
    I used to work at Market Basket and still have great friends who worked there. But it just seems illogical to me that these part-time employees didn't see the writing on the wall. Did they not have any fear that their jobs and livelihoods would be at stake by purposely walking off the job? Were they aware of the negative consequences of such a hasty decision or did the hive mind mentality to strike overload the ability to rationally decide if striking was in their best interest at the end of the day?
    In the following weeks, New Bedford and other communities that were served by Market Basket stores will be inundated with unemployed, low-skilled workers. Part-time jobs will be scarce and harder and harder to find. When the dust clears, the only people who will walk away unscathed will be the Demoulas family.
    Meanwhile, thousands of families across New England will lose a breadwinner and will risk financial challenges in the coming months. But this was a self inflicted wound at the hand of employees. In retrospect, employees should have allowed the Demoulas family to hash out whatever issues they had while retaining an aura of business as usual, allowing customers to shop, employees to work and management to sort out their own issues concurrently.
    But what's done is done and employees chose to walk out and boycott their employer. They made their choice their path, for better or worse.
    I sincerely hope that the family feud resolves itself sooner rather than later, but I feel that the damage may have already been done to this New England institution. In the end, the elephants will walk away with a few battle scars and scratches, but the mice will have been trampled under.
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