Now it’s getting serious. From Yahoo Finance, CtW Investment Group Calls for Whole Foods Board to Remove Chair and CEO John Mackey
From the article (with additional links provided by Fair Food Fight):
The CtW Investment Group called on the Whole Foods Market board to remove CEO John Mackey as Chairman and to begin the process of naming a new CEO in a letter to Whole Foods’ lead independent director, Dr. John Elstrott, yesterday afternoon. Citing the risk to Whole Foods’ brand reputation caused by Mr. Mackey’s editorial opposing President Obama’s proposed healthcare reform, CtW urged the board to take immediate action to prevent continued damage in the face of a quickly-growing boycott by Whole Foods’ progressive customer base.
So how serious is this threat to Mr. Mackey? Who is CtW? From the letter sent to Whole Foods’ director:
The CtW Invest Group with pension funds sponsored by unions affiliated with Change to Win, a federation of unions representing nearly 6 million members, to enhance long-term shareholder returns through active ownership. These funds are substantial long-term Whole Foods shareholders.
So here’s the drama so far: CEO Mackey writes an editorial angering his core shopper (who happens to be liberal/progressive, and he knows it); core shopper calls boycott; boycott draws attention of federated unions. How did unions wind up on center stage? Annie Shattuck and Zoe Brendt over at Civil Eats have an excellent piece on exactly why unions are getting aggressive with Whole Foods. And it doesn’t have much to do with reforming health care:
[B]ehind the scenes Whole Foods has been quietly dismantling a key piece of legislation that would make it easier for workers who want to form a union to do so….
Food industry giants from WalMart, to meatpacking titans Smithfield, and Hormel, to McDonalds have sent out an army of lobbyists to fight the pro-union bill. WalMart has spent $10.5 million in federal PAC spending since 2000, plus contributions to other corporate front groups lobbying against the bill.
However, unlike out-and-out opponents of the legislation, Starbucks and Whole Foods have built labor friendly images by supporting fair-trade and offering better wages than some other chains, despite being aggressively anti-union. Now it appears the retailers are cashing in on that image to modify the [pro-union bill] and remain, as Mackey says, “100% union-free.”
So what we have are games of charades within games of charades. The boycott (actually just outraged core shoppers being outraged and not a real boycott) is now being championed by an investment group (really a federation of unions) fighting a hippie natural foods store (run by a libertarian, who is secreatly taking on unions in back alley negotiations with lawmakers) that benefits from presenting a pro-labor front. Got that?
Will the CtW unions succeed in getting Mackey fired? Well, maybe. But in our charades-within-charades game, if Mackey goes, the headlines will declare that his departue was due to “poor management,” not union pressure. If Mackey is canned (a great big if), stock analysis will read that Whole Foods stockholders were looking for an excuse to sack the dude who oversaw investments dropping by 91%, followed by roller coasters rides of stock value inconsistency.
Whole Foods isn’t known for bowing to union pressure, but it would be interesting to know how many CtW members really are Whole Foods investors. That’s where the muscle is, after all.
