But there's another crisis in the making.
Last month, two supermarket chains,
Kroger and Albertsons, announced their
plans for a $24.6 billion merger.
This proposed merger has very
widespread concerning and dangerous
implications across the country,
but particularly right here at home
in Washington state and in Seattle.
If this merger goes through,
Seattle will be one of the
places that is most impacted.
We're standing between a Safeway
right over there and a QFC.
Safeway is under the Albertsons umbrella.
QFC is under krogers.
If these two giants merge,
I am deeply concerned about
the resulting effects.
On competition in the grocery industry.
On the likely rising prices for consumers
in a time of tremendous hardship,
on smaller grocery businesses who
simply can't compete with giants,
and on the effect on labor markets and wages.
I am the proud vice chair of the Antitrust
Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee
in the House of Representatives.
And I've been following the effects of
market concentration on competition,
on consumer prices,
and on employee wages and bargaining power.
For a couple of years in a 2019
study in the review of finance,
the study found that over the
past two decades,
more than 3/4 of US industries have
grown more concentrated as fewer,
larger players have controlled
more of the market.
Markups for essential products have tripled.
And the bottom line is this when
industries consolidate and concentrate
into the hands of just a few big players,
consumer choice dissipates prices.
Go up for working people.
While the pockets of CEO's and
wealthy shareholders get padded,
employment choices for workers go down.
And with the lack of mobility,
wages also go down.
This is a pattern that the Antitrust
subcommittee has been investigating.
Our 16 month investigation of the
Big Four big tech companies for
anticompetitive behavior yielded a
bipartisan package passing through Committee,
of which one was my ending
platform monopolies bill.
The Albertsons Kroger merger is
another example of market concentration
that must be investigated closely.
And that is why today,
just 15 minutes ago,
I released a letter to the Federal
Trade Commission.
Chair Lena Khan asking her to do
that investigation.
My letter outlines a number of
concerns around effects of the
merger on competition workers
and consumers that have actually
been a concern for some time.
It was almost a decade ago when the
FTC report did a report that found
that concentration in the grocery
industry resulted in significant
increases in consumer prices.
The COVID pandemic has exacerbated
those effects,
with customers paying significantly
higher prices for basic necessities even
while major US corporations reported record.
Profits.
In fact,
Kroger saw its net earnings for
the first two quarters of 2020
jump to more than $2.031 billion,
almost double the profit from
the same period a year earlier.
Working at grocery store used to be the
epitome of a good middle class job.
A job that would allow you to have a family,
a roof over your head,
money to send the kids on to
a better life than you had,
and some savings for your retirement.
Today, despite the enormously
wonderful efforts of the Union,
this is still far too rarely the case.
Too many grocery workers today
are homeless or barely surviving,
relying on food stamps and other public aid.
As a result of companies low pay
and lack of comprehensive benefits.
And yet still Kroger's CEO,
just for comparison,
made $22 million in 2020,
more than 900 times as much
as the median worker.
Merging these stores will only
drive down wages even further,
as workers will have little choice
of employers and less and less
ability to bargain for higher
wages or better working conditions.