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Market Basket board says it's offered Arthur T. 'a step forward' [Gloucester Daily Times, Mass. :: ](Gloucester Daily Times (MA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Aug. 08--The three independent Market Basket board members have offered former CEO Arthur T. Demoulas what they're terming a "path forward" to get business operations back to normal while Demoulas continues to pursue a bid to buy the company, the board members said in a joint statement released late this afternoon. The statement marks the first substantive response any board members have made to Demoulas' publicly announced Sunday night offer to return to work while a deal is negotiated, but it pointedly avoided saying he could be given his job back. No details about what paths forward have been offered, but the three members suggest that the board's counter offer included bringing back the dozen-plus senior corporate employees who have been fired or have quit in the wake of Demoulas' ousting June 23. Demoulas has not yet responded to the board's offer, the statement said. The stalemate over Market Basket's direction has triggered both employee job actions and an employee fueled customer boycott that, earlier this week, led to cutbacks of all hours for the company's thousands of part-time workers, including more than 200 at the Market Basket store in Gloucester Crossing. The three board members, Keith O. Cowan, Eric Gebaide and Ronald G. Weiner, said in the statement they wanted to get employees and customers back in the 71-store supermarket chain, which has been losing millions of dollars per day as a boycott grinds on. "To achieve this goal, the three independent directors have formally offered Arthur T. Demoulas ... a path forward that would allow a return to normal for associates, vendors, customers and communities, and would allow Mr. Demoulas to simultaneously continue to pursue his stated intent to acquire the entire ownership of the company from the majority owners," they said in the statement. Demoulas on Sunday offered to return to his position as CEO, the only demand of protesting employees, boycotting customers and striking warehouse workers, while a deal for him to buy out his cousin is negotiated. The statement did not specify what a path forward looks like, but suggested Demoulas' senior managers could be brought back to work. "Mr. Demoulas gets his management team back in place, associates can get back to doing their job, customers can get back to shopping and the company gets the breathing room needed to create an orderly and productive way forward," the statement said. We will update this story here at gloucestertimes.com as more information becomes available. To have text updates regarding this story and other local breaking news coverage sent to your mobile phone, just sign up for the Times' free text alert service on the gloucestertimes.com homepage. For more coverage of this story, look to tomorrow's print and online editions of the Gloucester Daily Times and gloucestertimes.com. Douglas Moser can be reached at [email protected]. You can also follow him on Twitter @EagleEyeMoser. Statement From the Independent Directors of DSM 8.8 ___ (c)2014 the Gloucester Daily Times (Gloucester, Mass.) Visit the Gloucester Daily Times (Gloucester, Mass.) at www.gloucestertimes.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |