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On the record
The corridor's labor system has a documented inside, and its central fact is a contest the union lost at the door and won a point of in federal court. Martin's Super Markets — the chain whose Granger store carries the train mural — is a nonunion chain: the National Labor Relations Board's own decision record describes it as a chain of 16 nonunion grocery stores in northern Indiana, headquartered in South Bend, competing with union Kroger. In November 1993 United Food and Commercial Workers Local 700 sent six or seven members to handbill at Martin's Ironwood store, at Ironwood Road and State Road 23, with leaflets reading "This store is nonunion. Please do not patronize." Martin's enforced its no-solicitation policy; the union filed its charge on November 23, 1993; the General Counsel's complaint followed on December 9, 1994; and after a hearing in South Bend on July 14, 1997, Administrative Law Judge Jerry M. Hermele decided Case 25-CA-22900 (JD-178-97), the case turning on what nonemployee union agents may do on private property under Babcock & Wilcox and Lechmere. That is a labor reckoning on the corridor's own pavement, in the federal record, and it replaces the register's silence with print. Around it, the system's other poles are dated: Local 700's published record is otherwise a Kroger record — some 8,000 central-Indiana Kroger workers under its largest contract, twice rejecting tentative agreements in 2025 (74 percent against the first) before ratifying a three-year contract on August 20, 2025, with 56 percent in favor — a union whose strength lies south of this corridor, pressing a nonunion chain at its edge. And the newest labor fact on the ground is a building-trades fact: the Tribune's May 2026 Microsoft coverage quotes Local 292 ironworkers — Joshua Moes, Tate Stiner, and Sean Williamsen — counting on the Granger data-center build for years of steady work. Union labor will build the campus; nonunion labor, on the Martin's record, will sell groceries beside it. No contract covering a Granger employer, and no other NLRB case naming a Granger-address employer, was found in the searches run; the Martin's case's store stands at the corridor's South Bend edge and is printed at that size.
NLRB, Martin's Super Markets and UFCW Local 700, Case 25-CA-22900, JD-178-97 (1997) (16 nonunion stores; charge November 23, 1993; complaint December 9, 1994; hearing July 14, 1997; Ironwood store, Ironwood Road and State Road 23; handbill text); UFCW and Labor Notes record of Local 700's Kroger contracts (2022 ratification; 2025 rejections and August 20, 2025 ratification, 56 percent); South Bend Tribune, May 2026 (Ironworkers Local 292 members on the Microsoft build).