…doesn’t like Amazon buying Whole Foods.

[United Food and Commercial Workers International Union President, Marc] Perrone plans to file a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission, arguing that letting Amazon buy Whole Foods would trigger a wave of store closures and eventually quash customer choice.

With a straight face, he argued in his complaint (which somehow fell into The Washington Post‘s hands before the filing) that

Regardless of whether Amazon has an actual Whole Foods grocery store near a competitor, their online model and size allows them to unfairly compete with every single grocery store in the nation.

So, doing a better job of competing in an industry, doing a better job of selling products customers want, is in some way unfair.  Hmm….

And

I’ve got concerns, and our organization has concerns, about what technology does and at what cost to society[.]

Sure he does.  So long as society is defined as union society.  Because technology improvements benefit the broader society of ordinary American citizens.  Just compare tech-developed and built cars with buggies and wagons.  Compare today’s house with yesterday’s.  Compare today’s communications media with yesterday’s.  Compare today’s cars with yesterday’s, come to that.

The union, Perrone said, is worried that America’s shifting shopping preferences will spark a crisis in its industry the same way automation and trade with China and Mexico has wiped out factory work.

Our factory work hasn’t been wiped out; it’s just changed its character because competition made those manufacturing industries get better and do better.

The union just wants a protection from competition.

Imagine that.