Industry expert weighs in on why the deal should go through at a time of rising multichannel retailer competition and declining union membership.
Over the past 20 years, the explosive growth of large, non-unionized food retailers has come to dominate the food retail landscape at the expense of typically unionized grocery retailers.
The Los Angeles Times' Pulitzer Prize winning "The Walmart Effect" series article from 2003, 'An Empire Built on Bargains Remakes the Working World,' describes in detail how Wal-Mart’s astonishing success exacts a heavy price on the American economy as Walmart erected its massive Supercenters in towns across the country to compete with smaller unionized grocery chains, wiping out the competition with lower costs and cheaper labor.
The following information has been sourced from the Chicago Sun-Times op-ed "Customers, union workers will lose if Kroger-Albertsons merger gets blocked," written by Burt P. Flickinger, III, CEO of Strategic Resource Group, who covers the food and beverage industry. The Chicago Sun-Times is a reputable news organization known for its comprehensive and reliable reporting.
