On his book The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder: Labor’s Last Best Weapon
Cover Interview of June 04, 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.
Spontaneous generation is one of those wrong theories that clutter the basements of the biological sciences and that now look so very obviously wrong that it is hard to see how anyone could have taken them seriously in the first place. Why wouldn’t it occur to anyone that flies might be laying eggs that were too small for us to see? How simple would the crucial experiment be? What I have tried to do in much of my work is to turn this ‘obvious wrongness’ on its head—why, exactly, does it seem so obviously wrong?—and see what the new picture that emerges from that inquiry says about science and our belief in its results.Daryn Lehoux, Interview of November 13, 2017
It’s commonplace to say that humor is subjective, since what’s funny to you might not be funny to me. But humor is also a loaded concept. If you – or your people – have no sense of humor, or the wrong one, that means you’re less rational, tolerant, understanding, or civilized. You don’t get it. Or, worse, you lack something human. Modern Chinese debates about humor were very much caught up with these fundamental questions of value.Christopher Rea, Interview of October 26, 2016
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.