A 1976 article about the Andover Shopping Center appeared in many newspapers across America. It said, "The company stores look ridiculous in the age of shopping plazas, and the only real competition between the company luncheonette and McDonald's is that both serve rubber on sesame seed buns.
"Still, there are in the nation obscure pockets which company stores continue to pick. One reportedly is in the tucked-away coal region of the Virginia panhandle. There four locals of the United Mine Workers have filed suit against the Westmoreland Coal Co. in protest against the practices and philosophy of the company's stores.
"The miners have apparently been grumbling about the Westmoreland situation since the days when coal cooked the eggs of the nation, but the arguments have only recently been formalized. Attorney Strother Smith says at least one Westmoreland store, the Andover Shopping Center near Appalachia, Va., operates as if it was still acceptable 'for men to owe their souls to the company store.' Smith says he knows no other labor issue in the area as sensitive as this one.
"Like voices from the medieval past of the coal business, miners say the Andover store uses its credit and its services as an extension of company hostility towards them. Roger Barker, for example, a 28-year-old who irritates the company with endless safety complaints, says that he was fired for his militancy one time and within minutes his company store credit was revoked. He had a paycheck pending from which the store could deduct his charges, 'but all they wanted to do was hurt me as much as they could, in this case by denying me groceries.'"
I don't know - this seems to me to be a heavy-handed and one-sided article.