‘More For Your Dollar’
Who wins with this resolution of the Demoulas drama? Out of the gate, it looks like everyone wins after six weeks of pain. As a lot of us in this region go back to Market Basket as full- or part-time shoppers and/or employees, let’s hope that the “more” in “More For Your Dollar” says something about more fairness for people who go to work every day with something meaningful to do. In the end, that’s how I see the outcome. The people of Market Basket Nation saw something fundamentally fair in the exchange of labor and compensation, in the exchange of goods for payment, and in the solidarity at a place of business when they looked at Market Basket. Can a common experience like this be a catalyst for larger change? We all watched it day to day and many of us took part in some way. We have to wait for events to play out to know that answer. I’ve never seen anything like it in Greater Lowell. Those empty parking lots week upon week spoke volumes. People stuck together on this one. It was an amazing example of collective action. Community became a verb, an action word, in this case.