Acme to lay off about 900 part-time workers

Acme Markets announced Thursday that it was laying off about 900 of the 14,000 employees at its 117 stores in and around Philadelphia, South Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland.

Two-thirds of the jobs being eliminated are in Southeastern Pennsylvania and South Jersey, according to union officials who were given the news at a meeting with Acme officials in Malvern, where the division of Supervalu Inc. has local offices.

Acme president Dan Sanders met with union leaders in the morning and later shared the news with employees via satellite broadcasts to stores.

The layoffs will take effect May 7 and involve only part-timers, mostly those who work 12 to 16 hours a week on nights and weekends. Those employees include deli, seafood, and meat department staff, as well as workers who stock shelves, bag groceries, round up shopping carts, and run cash registers.

The decision comes several months after five local Acme stores were closed down, and two weeks after Eden Prairie, Minn.-based Supervalu, a multibillion-dollar corporation that has been struggling with high debt and declining revenues, reported that sales in the last quarter fell yet again at its supermarket chains in the Northeast, a portfolio that includes Acme.

"What drove me to the decision is that for a period of years now we've had a steady decline in sales - $600 million over four years," Sanders said in an interview. "And there's been no proportional adjustment in terms of hours in the business as the sales volume has declined.

"We've just reached a point where we have some short-term pain for some longer-term gain," Sanders said. "We have to align the workforce that we need with the business that we have."

Taking the largest hit is United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776, which represents members in Southeastern Pennsylvania, where Acme has a major presence. Of the 900 targeted jobs, 400 are from Local 1776, or 12.2 percent of its members.

An additional 200 jobs are with UFCW Local 1360 in South Jersey, which has about 2,000 members. Fifty-three jobs are with Local 152; the remainder are in North Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland.

"Nobody wants to see Acme fail," said Brian String, president of Local 152, which represents deli, meat, and seafood department staff across all four states.

"The signal we got from Dan Sanders today was pretty clear that they mean business," String said. "They're going to really sharpen their skills, get their prices lower, and win customers back into their stores."