On his book The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder: Labor’s Last Best Weapon
Cover Interview of June 03, 2018
A close-up
My book begins with a largely forgotten California strike
that took place at Safeway supermarkets in 2003-04. At first glance, the basic
arc of that story is a familiar confrontation between a company, Safeway, and a
labor union, the United Food and Commercial Workers union (“UFCW”). Shortly
after taking over as Safeway CEO, Steven Burd launched a disastrous acquisition
campaign, buying up several supermarket chains. When those acquisitions turned
sour and the company began bleeding cash, Burd tried to cut worker compensation
to plug the gap he created. He took a hardline with workers and their lead
negotiator, the UFCW’s Sean Harrigan. After a five-month strike, the company
and the union reached an agreement that was highly favorable to the company.
Safeway won, it seemed.
But something surprising immediately followed the strike, a
development that sits at the core of my book. Several fed-up worker pension
funds, including the California Public Employees Retirement System—of which
Harrigan was president—launched a shareholder campaign to unseat Burd and
replace several of the board members that blindly backed his course of action.
The partial success of that unusual shareholder revolt, led by worker funds, is
the starting point for my book. I think it anticipates many of the developments
with working-class shareholder activism in the ensuing fifteen years, up until
today. It also lets a reader compare the costs and benefits of a strike with
the costs and benefits of a shareholder campaign, with both having taken place
in one setting, over one set of issues, albeit framed in different ways. I
think someone who cares about worker issues and economic inequality but knows
little about shareholder activism can see its potential in this one episode. The
book then follows up the Safeway story with those of the activist generation
following Harrigan, which I think refined and improved upon those tactics to
further advance worker shareholder power.
The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009
[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011
A close-up
My book begins with a largely forgotten California strike that took place at Safeway supermarkets in 2003-04. At first glance, the basic arc of that story is a familiar confrontation between a company, Safeway, and a labor union, the United Food and Commercial Workers union (“UFCW”). Shortly after taking over as Safeway CEO, Steven Burd launched a disastrous acquisition campaign, buying up several supermarket chains. When those acquisitions turned sour and the company began bleeding cash, Burd tried to cut worker compensation to plug the gap he created. He took a hardline with workers and their lead negotiator, the UFCW’s Sean Harrigan. After a five-month strike, the company and the union reached an agreement that was highly favorable to the company. Safeway won, it seemed.
But something surprising immediately followed the strike, a development that sits at the core of my book. Several fed-up worker pension funds, including the California Public Employees Retirement System—of which Harrigan was president—launched a shareholder campaign to unseat Burd and replace several of the board members that blindly backed his course of action. The partial success of that unusual shareholder revolt, led by worker funds, is the starting point for my book. I think it anticipates many of the developments with working-class shareholder activism in the ensuing fifteen years, up until today. It also lets a reader compare the costs and benefits of a strike with the costs and benefits of a shareholder campaign, with both having taken place in one setting, over one set of issues, albeit framed in different ways. I think someone who cares about worker issues and economic inequality but knows little about shareholder activism can see its potential in this one episode. The book then follows up the Safeway story with those of the activist generation following Harrigan, which I think refined and improved upon those tactics to further advance worker shareholder power.