Shoppers hope boycott will get industry’s attention
Nationwide campaign underway to avoid Loblaws locations in May because of high grocery prices
There’s a certain grape juice Shelley Senior buys because it agrees with her sensitive stomach.
It’s only available at Dominion, but the Corner Brook resident is willing to go without that product for the next month as she participates in a nationwide call to boycott all Loblaws stores.
Support for the protest during the month of May has been growing on social media in response to the rising cost of living, fuelled in particular by unavoidable hits to the pocketbook from inflated grocery bills.
SYMBOLIC
Senior doesn’t have a particular issue with Loblaws — which owns Dominion, Shoppers Drug Mart, No Frills and others — any more than she does with any of the other major grocery chains.
She says the major supermarkets are all vulnerable to the kind of boycott that is targeting Loblaws this month.
For Senior, it’s more of a symbolic gesture and about showing the big corporations that people coming together for a cause can make a difference.
“Money is not what’s powerful,” she said. “People are what is powerful and that is the message that needs to get across. If there’s a boycott of Sobeys next month, I’ll take part in that, too.
“I’ll take part in any action I can take that I think might somehow help in the war against income inequality.”
‘THIS IS NOT OK’
Senior knows many people are struggling between buying food and making ends meet. Her concern is that, not only is the divide between the rich and the poor widening, but it doesn’t seem to be slowing.
“It’s like a big snowball going downhill and picking up speed as it goes along,” she said.
“The way I see it, we are going to be completely ruled by our corporate overlords … if we don’t stand up to them and say, ‘This is not OK.’”
Senior says the boycott could achieve its intended effect if enough people take part and stick with it.
“If people commit to it in large numbers, it can’t help but make a difference,” she said. “Then, Sobeys might
say,n‘odk. look and We better pull up our socks or it will be us next month.’”
‘PEASANT-NOBLE INTERACTION’
Iain Murray-ayers of Mount Pearl is also supporting the boycott.
He says the threat of a mass boycott has already got the attention of Loblaws and hopes the gesture will also not go unnoticed by the other major players in the grocery industry.
More importantly, he hopes it can translate into shrunken bottom lines of receipts at the checkout versus ballooning corporate profits.
“They're a company, they're allowed to make profit. But do they need to be making quite so much when people are suffering?” asked Murray-ayers.
“We're currently moving towards a peasant-noble interaction where the neonobles have no direct responsibility for the neo-peasants and that's worse than the Middle Ages and feudalism.”
WHAT ABOUT EMPLOYEES?
He does have some concerns about how an effective boycott might affect the grocery store employees caught in the crossfire.
“If the boycott goes strongly, one of the first corporate decisions will be that their hours will be cut,” said Murray-ayers.
“It won't start hurting the company until very few people shop there and a skeleton crew has very little to do.”
TIME WILL TELL
While he would also support a boycott of other major grocery chains, Murray-ayers said there may be a better way for the government to address the cost-of-living issue, but that, too, may not be easily done.
“Honestly, a modest universal basic income would probably be a better solution, but that would require a substantial reworking of taxation to fund it to help eliminate the extremes of wealth and poverty,” he said.
Murray-ayers supports buying local, but hasn’t done the calculations to determine whether his grocery bill would be more or less expensive by buying more from locally owned sources.
Like Senior, he said only time will tell if this and any other boycotts have the desired effect of lowering grocery prices.
“It's anyone's guess whether they will have a heart and truly care about consumers, instead of just giving lip service,” said Murray-ayers.