@e6 They Called It Simplification
There’s a word they used in that meeting. Simplification.
It’s a clean word. A boardroom word. It fits neatly on a slide and doesn’t make any noise when it lands.
Let me tell you what it sounds like in a kitchen at 11 p.m. It sounds like a parent doing the math on a mortgage. It sounds like a kid asking why Mom’s laptop is closed on a Tuesday. It sounds like 3,000 families learning that the work they built, the late nights and the missed recitals and the systems they made run, was never theirs to keep.
Three thousand corporate workers. More than a third of the people who make this company think. Phased out over three years and moved to the Kroger Capability Center in Bengaluru.
They’ll tell you it’s about survival. So let’s look at what they chose to survive on.
Seven and a half billion dollars, spent buying back their own stock. Not on stores, not on people, but on making a number go up.
Eight hundred million dollars spent on lawyers, bankers, and advisors for a merger with Albertsons that collapsed under its own ambition.
Billions more in liability, as Albertsons now takes them to court over the wreckage.
And the cost of keeping every one of those 3,000 Americans at their desks? About three hundred million dollars a year.
Sit with that. The buyback alone could have carried every one of those jobs for twenty-five years. A quarter century of paychecks, college funds, and Friday nights, traded for a stock chart.
This was never a question of whether they could keep you. It was a question of whether they wanted to. And now you have your answer.
To every person at Kroger and 84.51°:
You don’t owe loyalty to a company that budgeted you out. Loyalty is a two-way street, and they just closed their lane.
Use what you’ve earned. Take your PTO, your personal days, and your sick time. Those are wages they already owe you, not favors.
Give your hours, not your evenings. Do the job you’re paid to do, and nothing they’d need to pay someone else to do.
Tell the truth about what you’ve seen. Write it on Glassdoor, for Kroger and for 84.51°, so the next person who applies walks in with their eyes open.
And above all, take care of each other. Talk to your coworkers. Share leads, share referrals, share the number of a good employment lawyer. They are counting on you to scatter quietly. Don’t.
To every family that shops at Kroger:
A boardroom only hears one language, and it’s spoken in revenue.
If you have a Boost membership, cancel it, and in the box that asks why, write four words: Offshoring American jobs. Try the regional grocer, the farmers market, the store down the road. Let your receipts cast the vote.
This isn’t a left issue or a right issue. Ask anyone in any town if a profitable American company should ship thousands of jobs overseas while spending billions on its own stock, and you’ll get the same answer.
To the press and to those who represent us:
Ask the questions. Hold the hearing. Make them say simplification out loud, on the record, to the families it erased.
Media
Cincinnati Enquirer Tip Line: Submit a News Tip
Progressive Grocer Editors: gacosta@ensembleIQ.com | ecrowe@ensembleiq.com
Elected Representatives
Ohio Democratic Party: info@ohiodems.org
Ohio Republican Party: info@ohiogop.org
Cook County Democratic Party: info@cookcountydems.com
Chicago Republican Party: Jeff.Fiedler@ChicagoGOP.com
They expect us to sign the severance, lower our eyes, and disappear one by one.
But here’s what they forgot. Every system they’re about to ship overseas, we built. Every insight they sell, we found. Every number they’ll show investors next week, we made real.
They can move the work. They cannot move the people who know what this company was supposed to stand for.
So share this. Stand next to the person beside you. And let the word they chose, simplification, become the simplest truth of all:
When working people stand together, greed loses.
#BoycottKroger #StopOffshoring #KrogerLayoffs #WorkerSolidarity