Washington unions celebrate Kroger-Albertsons merger’s demise

EVERETT — Local unions celebrated this week after the failure of a potential merger between the two largest standalone grocery chains in the country.

On Tuesday, both federal and King County judges separately shot down the $25 billion merger. This came over two years after Kroger, the largest standalone grocery retailer in the country, announced its intention to purchase Albertsons, the second largest.

The companies said the merger would lower prices and allow them to compete with Walmart. Unions representing the company’s workers, on the other hand, said the deal would have increased prices, reduced competition, lowered wages and compromised safety standards.

Workers at local grocery stores had vocally opposed the merger for the past two years, carrying out informational campaigns outside their stores to inform customers.

Kroger and Albertsons would have sold over 600 stores to C&S Wholesale, a grocery company with stores in the midwest and northeast, if the merger went through. Nineteen were in Snohomish County.

“In my view, the evidence convincingly shows that the current competition between Kroger and Albertsons stores is fierce in the State of Washington,” King County Superior Court judge Marshall Ferguson said at the hearing. “By contrast, the divestiture buyer, C&S Wholesale, with its limited retail experience, will not be able to replicate the ferocity of that competition or compete in Washington against the colossus of a merged Kroger and Albertsons.”

On Wednesday, Albertsons pulled out of the deal, and the two companies are now fighting head to head. After backing out, Albertsons sued its to-be owners, alleging Kroger failed to take sufficient action to secure regulatory approval of the merger. Kroger called the lawsuit “baseless and without merit.”

Two unions, the United Food and Commercial Workers 3000 and Teamsters Local 38, represent employees at Albertsons and Kroger stores in Washington. Both groups issued statements celebrating the rulings Tuesday, with the Teamsters calling the proposed merger a “direct threat to workers, consumers and competition in the grocery industry.”

“These developments of the judges blocking the merger, and Albertsons terminating the merger agreement, provide the opportunity for what we have been saying for years that these companies should be doing — investing their money in better wages, better staffing, improved safety, more stores, and lower prices,” UFCW 3000 President Faye Guenther said in a press release.

The merger coming to an end was good news to Jeff Moses, a shopper on Wednesday at the Albertsons in Marysville.

“It’s the type of thing where you just have to have competition, it’s good and healthy for everybody,” Moses said. “It keeps everybody honest.”

Here are the local stores Albertsons and Kroger planned to sell:

Bothell

QFC: 18921 Bothell Way NE

QFC: 22833 Bothell Everett Highway

Safeway: 20711 Bothell Everett Highway

Edmonds

QFC: 22828 100th Ave. W

Everett

QFC: 2615 Broadway

Safeway: 4128 Rucker Ave.