Market Basket employees claim hostile work environment amid feud

The concerns come amid another Demoulas family feud over control of the company. This fight, between Arthur T. Demoulas and his sisters, began when the CEO was placed on leave as the board investigated rumors that he was planning a work stoppage.

It comes about a decade after a feud between Arthur T. Demoulas and his cousin, Arthur S. Demoulas, spurred a company-wide work stoppage that ended when Arthur T. and his three sisters bought out the other side of the family. Arthur T., who controls 28 percent of the company, and his sisters, who control about 60 percent, are now at odds over management and succession.

Polito said she is scheduled to meet with board members on Aug. 21, but she will not attend if the firm investigating the claims of a work stoppage for the board, Quinn Emanuel, is present.

“If they are there, I will not be meeting with them, because I feel that they are not fair and impartial to this,” she said. “Looking at the media reports, I don’t think that their investigation warrants me to be there.”

Quinn Emanuel did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Harvey J. Wolkoff, a lawyer for Market Basket and a founding partner in Quinn Emanuel’s Boston office, said in a statement that the company takes human resources complaints seriously, but holding press conferences and speaking publicly about the concerns is “not appropriate.”

“A campaign of division undertaken in this way does not serve this fine company or its amazing associates,” he said. “If Arthur Demoulas truly cared about Market Basket, and not just himself, he would be sitting down with the board to work out a plan and cooperating to provide a forward-looking budget, a capital expenditures plan and a succession plan.”

At the press conference, payroll manager Jillian Evans said she is working in a “helicopter-like atmosphere“ where she is constantly under surveillance as company leaders keep tabs on who she is meeting with and when.

Customer service employee Christine McCarthy, who is pregnant, said she met with Evans to ask a question about benefits and “was questioned as to what I was doing in her office.”

“That’s nobody’s business,” she said. “For anybody else to question what I was doing when it relates to my benefits as an associate of Market Basket for 14 years is highly inappropriate.”

Operations supervisor Esteban Alvarez said he was suspended without explanation — and without pay — on June 4.

Adam Deschene, also an operations supervisor, said he received a two-week suspension for “insubordination” because he did not submit his itinerary one weekend and then was placed on a 12-week leave for “disruptions” once he returned.

“When I asked what those disruptions were, I was told that we weren’t getting into that now,” he said.

Evans said the office is “no longer an atmosphere of safety, of confidence, of good will.”

“This is not Market Basket,” Evans said, “and we are headed for a serious struggle.”

Stella Tannenbaum can be reached at stella.tannenbaum@globe.com.