ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a case that compares Food Lion and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). Food Lion is the largest of the three Delhaize subsidiaries. They are Food Lion, Kash n' Karry and Hannaford Bros. Co., employ more than 109,000 associates in more than 1,400 stores on the American eastern seaboard. Food Lion has traditionally been a high-volume-lowest-cost leader. In 1992, the UFCW began using a "corporate campaign" strategy in its long-running effort to organize Food Lion workers. Food Lion's leaders must find a way to retain the cost advantages derivative from its non-union-dependent low-cost strategy while simultaneously lowering the level of conflict with its long-time protagonist, the UFCW and its allies. Since the early 1990s Food Lion has claimed that the UFCW has been waging a sophisticated "corporate campaign" against the firm. Food Lion's unblemished track record of avoiding organizing success by the UFCW led the union to adopt a new organizing strategy.
