ICA Allows Local Israel Boycott

Dear Readers,

As a response to the article I wrote Monday, 14 June, 2010 concerning John Curovac’s personally initiated boycott of Israeli goods I have gotten much feedback from you.  I encouraged all of you to write a letter of complaint to ICA’s central board. Many of you have contacted ICA in order to complain about Curovac’s actions—how can a supermarket which has a board that claims to “follow the UN and Swedish government’s recommendations as to business relations with other countries” allow a single store—which represents the whole concern—to conduct an independently initiated boycott of Israeli goods? This is clearly not in line with the UN and Swedish government’s recommendations as to business relations with other countries. Neither Sweden, nor the UN has initiated a boycott against Israel—and neither should the ICA if they claim to abide by the guidelines of the Swedish government.

Boycotting Israeli goods is done by Curovac solely to receive personal political gains—it has nothing to do with enhancing the sales of ICA’s supermarkets, bettering its business relations or giving better services or goods to its customers. But it does force a biased political agenda upon customers who are used to doing their grocery shopping in the local supermarket.  The boycott is clearly going against the guidelines held by the ICA board but still nothing is done to stop John Curovac’s personal political campaign.

I am not able to publish the answers which many of my readers have received from ICA’s customer support as ICA  has prohibited their emails from being used by a third party. It seems however, that all of you who complained have received the exact same email. The same email which does not answer any of your questions and which does not in any way justify the boycott which is conducted by John Curovac. 

According to ICA, each local store is responsible for its range of products. This means that Curovac is the person responsible for choosing which goods to buy for the supermarket which he manages. It appears that according to ICA this is enough justification for ICA to allow Curovac to continue with his personal boycott of Israel in Växjö. This incorporates not only refusing to buy Israeli goods but destroying the ones already bought- causing losses for ICA as well as using the stores facilities to spread his political goals by putting up posters and signs calling for people to boycott Israel.
Allowing for this,  also basically means local ICA stores managers can—without the intervention of the ICA central board—conduct boycotts and publicly promote personal political agendas using Swedish ICA supermarkets as their personal forums.  They can promote any line of personal opinion they like—without the intervention of ICA’s central board. Such lawlessness does not seem to represent the orderly and democratic society which Sweden is claims to represent in the international arena. Yet,  ICA chooses to encourage this anarchic behavior by not putting an end to the foolish boycott which Curovac still running in the supermarket which has become his personal political platform.

Therefore, if you still feel upset and angry about ICA’s lack of control over its branches, keep complaining! The worst thing that can happen is that you get a lighter conscience. At best, ICA and Sweden will finally see that the world is watching, and take responsibility for what is happening on their turf.

This is ICA's email : kundkontakt@ICA.se
and this is Curovacs  email: john.curovac@supermarket.ica.se