Leveraged Buyouts

By the time Congress gets around to putting a curb on leveraged buyouts, friendly or unfriendly, we’re liable to be down to one supermarket chain in Southern California.

The unbridled greed of the Wall Street manipulators is tearing apart the business fabric of the country, and all the wrong people are reaping the benefits--the manipulators themselves, a minority of stockholders and a whole lot of attorneys.

The Safeway buyout last year decimated the chain nationwide--thousands of workers lost their jobs as division after division was shut down or sold.

Despite management assurances to the contrary as late as last summer that the Southern California division was rock-solid, Safeway is selling out to Vons. Fortunately for Safeway employees, Vons is a progressive, rapidly growing company, and hopefully many Safeway employees will be able to switch over to Vons.

But is Vons safe from the arbitrageurs? Is anyone safe? Robert Campeau is going after Federated, which owns Ralphs Grocery Co., and whether he’s successful or not, Ralphs is likely to be sold off. Another supermarket chain bites the dust.

Every time one of these Wall Street geniuses makes another wave, a few thousand more working people drown. Congress had better get cracking and do something about it.

THOMAS J. VANDEVELD

President

Local 135, United

Food & Commercial Workers

San Diego