Also published at WGBHNews.org.
One quick observation about the resolution of the Market Basket standoff: This was a very rare case of a consumer boycott actually working. The reason it worked was because people truly love Market Basket and wanted to support the employees.
The workers deserve a huge amount of credit for standing up and risking their livelihoods. But if this had been just another supermarket, management would have fired them all and the public wouldn’t have cared — at least not enough to force action. In the case of Market Basket, management didn’t dare fire the workers because the customers wouldn’t have stood for it.
Congratulations to the employees — and, yes, to Arthur T. Demoulas — for a remarkable victory. Market Basket has become a symbol of how people working in the service economy can make a decent living while still offering a better product than the competition.