Grocery-store owners say city is overreaching with labor mandates

Under bill passed Tuesday, new owners of grocery stores are required them to retain employees for three months

By Rosa Goldensohn Email

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Photo: Buck Ennis

Grocery store owners will have to follow another mandate.

The City Council on Tuesday guaranteed grocery workers their jobs for 90 days if store ownership flips, the latest in a flurry of new municipal labor laws.

The Grocery Worker Retention Act protects employees from being immediately let go by new owners, and gives unions a chance to keep those workers as members. It requires that employees be kept on for three months after a new owner takes over, with exceptions for downsizing.

But local grocery store owners say the new law is a government overreach that infringes on their freedom to hire the workers that best fit their needs.

More than a dozen A&P-owned supermarkets in the city changed hands after the company went bankrupt last year, effectively canceling contracts at Pathmark and some other stores where workers were United Food and Commercial Workers members. In response, the City Council’s labor committee advanced the bill that passed 40-7 Tuesday.

“Through this legislation we are able to provide communities with stability that would otherwise not exist during grocery transitions," bill sponsor I. Daneek Miller, D-Queens, said in a statement. “We have already seen the terrible impact that A&P’s bankruptcy had on families throughout the city, and we don’t want to see such again.”

Local supermarket chain Morton Williams picked up two Food Emporiums from A&P. The company’s co-owner Avi Kaner, whose Morton Williams supermarkets are already unionized, said the council is “turning into an organized labor union” with the new law.  
"Government is imposing its contract on business without the due process of negotiation,” Kaner said.  “And they’re singling out the one dying industry in Manhattan.”

Data from the city do not show a decline in the number of grocers, but Kanor said local food retailers are already being edged out by nonunion “destination supermarkets” like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s, which would only be affected by the bill if they take over an old store.

The law would make it harder to sell a supermarket to a new owner as opposed to closing, Kaner said.

“Why are they only targeting the grocery business?” Kaner asked.

But the council has passed other mandates affecting all manner of businesses, requiring paid-sick time and mass-transit benefits, and limiting questions they may ask job applicants about unemployment or criminal history. 

"It's becoming an organized labor union just shoving these socialist concepts down the throat of businesses," Kaner said of the council.