Kroger had a number of stores in the Western Pennsylvania region, encompassing Pittsburgh and surrounding areas from 1928 until 1984 when the U.S. began experiencing a severe economic recession. The recession had two significant and related effects on Kroger's operations in the region. One of them was that the highly cyclical manufacturing-based economy of the region declined in greater proportion than the rest of the U.S., which undercut demand for the higher-end products and services offered by Kroger. The second effect of the economic recession was to worsen labor-management relations, causing a protracted labor strike in 1983 and 1984. During the strike, Kroger withdrew all of its stores from the Western Pennsylvania market, including some recently opened "superstores" and "greenhouses", selling these stores to Wetterau (now part of SuperValu), who promptly flipped the stores to independent owners while continuing to supply them under the FoodLand and Shop 'n Save brands. Kroger's exit ceded the market to lower-cost, locally owned rivals, most notably Giant Eagle and the SuperValu-supplied grocers. (Kroger purchased Eagle Grocery company, whose founders went on to create Giant Eagle.) Kroger still maintains a presence in the nearby Morgantown, West Virginia, Wheeling, West Virginia, and Weirton, West Virginia/Steubenville, Ohio, areas where Giant Eagle has a much smaller presence and the SuperValu-supplied stores are virtually nonexistent, though in all of these cases, Walmart remains a major competitor and Aldi is the only other supermarket with any market overlap.