King Soopers/Krogers Strike 100 Day Freeze

Union workers were allowed to go back to work at Midnight last night.
Looks like the negotiations are still in process.

With the new business friendly administration, will Kroger and Albertsons decide to merge after all?

Must be hard for Union grocers to compete against stores like Walmart and Target.

If memory serves me still, the strike was only slated to last 2 weeks when it was launched with an end date of the 20th because workers have to accumulate a certain number of hours worked in order to qualify for the health care and a strike that lasted longer than that would have precluded the striking workers from being able to amass enough hours to qualify. Color me unimpressed that they went back to work a day early.

King Soopers will make a minor alteration to their rejected "last, best, and final offer" prior to the strike, the union will approve of the new contract and everyone will be set for the next 3-5 years until the workers strike again citing unfair labor practices, low wages, inadequate benefits, etc., etc., etc., and it'll be wash, rinse, repeat.

Aldi's is looking at moving into the area. Reason to finish up negotiations soon?

Will Aldi buy up Albertsons/Safeway? Or will Trump support Kroger and Albertsons merging?

Kroger/Albertson's merger is closed, isn't going to happen in the wake of the courts, at the behest of Biden's DoJ, Weiser, our own AG, and other assorted and unseemly entities, preventing the merger under anti-monopoly and anti-competition laws. It's done, finished, last I heard Albertson's was suing Krogers for the $600 failure to merge compensation and billions more in lost shareholder value, legal fees . . . the usual stuff that happens when the government squashes a merger.

I'm sure that Albertson's is seeking another buyer at this point, maybe C&S, their wholesale supplier, will add them into the fold and rebrand them as Winn-Dixie or franchise some of them out as Piggly Wiggly since C&S was slated to purchase a number of the stores anyway if the merger went through. I don't think ALDI is in an acquisition phase, more of an expansion into new territory one given they sold off the Winn-Dixie brand recently. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to get rid of Winn-Dixie only to acquire Albertson's. Better to just expand your own brand rather than try to resurrect someone else's tarnished one.

Why build new stores when you can retrofit poor performing Albertsons?

For the same reason you'd buy a new construction home at the same price point as buying a 30 year old building . . . in the first instance you only have your own mistakes to contend with, in the latter you have the entropy to deal with.