Update on A&P Bankruptcy Procedures

Yesterday was a very long and very active day in court.

The 12 Local unions and the UFCW International spent the day fighting to keep as many members working as they can, including in the stores being purchased by non union owners.  In an effort to try to protect our members jobs, the UFCW agreed to waive our objections to these sales if the non-union employers would hire as many of the employees that work in those stores as possible. 

 

As we have said many times before our focus is on preserving members jobs.  With the help of Judge Drain some of the non-union buyers have already agreed to hire a minimum of 25% of their new employees from the pool of displaced A&P members.  

 

Those non-union employers that didn't reach an agreement on this issue, including Best Yet, had their sale approvals adjourned until next week.  It appears that Best Yet may bid on additional stores, which complicates the issue of protecting jobs even further. Judge Drain did however approve the sales to BX And M and Fransula Foods (non Local 1500 shops) after the bidders and union confirmed their modified hiring agreement.

A little closer to home, the objections to the sales of Pathmark stores #624 & #642 had to be withdrawn when it was finally established that the buyers (the Manichevitz family) were a real estate entity and have no desire to operate a supermarket in either of these two locations.  Our global protections from the 2011 bankruptcy settlement only protect our stores from being sold to non-union supermarket operators, not real estate entities.  Unfortunately for our members it means that the fight to keep these two locations open and operating as Union supermarkets has officially ended. 

 

In addition, last evening the landlord for store #682 in Staten Island bought that lease back from A&P.  Although we do not yet know what the landlords long term plans are for this building we do know that the store will also be closed after the liquidation process has been completed.

The judge extended the 1113(e) order restricting traditional bumping to other stores through the end of 2015.  The 1113(c) was adjourned to next Tuesday along with the outstanding sale motions.

 

As we previously updated, a ruling on severance for the remaining stores has still not been officially made by the bankruptcy judge. However some of the motions in court yesterday point toward a positive result to the severance issue for the remaining stores in the coming days.

Please review the chart below for a full updated list of our Pathmark stores.

Resource Fairs:

 

The next Resource Fair is in NYC on Friday, October 23rd. The Fair is 9:30 am - 6 pm at RWDSU: 370 7th Avenue, New York, NY. 

 

For more information you can visit www.ufcwmemberresources.com.

 

Please do not hesitate to contact us for any questions, concerns or issues.