Editors’ Note: Excerpted from the April 2, 2020, New York Times.
By
On March 23, as the coronavirus pandemic put grocery workers on the front lines of a public health crisis, Trader Joe’s sent a memo to store managers encouraging them to relay a message to employees: Joining a union might be a bad idea.
“It’s not like buying toothpaste you don’t end up liking,” said the email, which listed a series of anti-union talking points, including a warning about the size of dues. “It’s like buying a house … you’re in for the long term.”
The pandemic has led to a wave of worker activism in recent weeks, as employees at Instacart, Amazon and Whole Foods have gone on strike and demanded increased protections. At Trader Joe’s, a chain known for its outwardly cheerful work force, employees have criticized what they describe as the company’s haphazard response to the crisis, reigniting a debate about union organizing that has simmered for years.
That nascent organizing effort seems to have alarmed Trader Joe’s. At the end of March, store managers gave anti-union lectures during regularly scheduled “huddles” with staff, using talking points from the email. In one case, a regional manager visited stores to argue that the hazard pay petition was an opportunistic attempt to seduce workers into joining a union.
Workers hoping to form a union recently circulated a petition calling for Trader Joe’s to offer “hazard pay,” or an hourly rate of time and a half. And over the last few weeks, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union has held talks with employees.
At a store in Philadelphia, the manager told a group of about 30 employees that “a union is a business and they’re trying to take your money,” according to two employees who attended the meeting. A store manager at a Trader Joe’s in Maryland said that joining a union was like getting married and that “once you’re in, it’s very hard to get out,” according to an employee who heard the comment.
“They are sitting around there worried about it because they are anti-union and this is the perfect time for us to unionize,” said Kris King, a longtime Trader Joe’s employee in Louisville, Ky. “They feel vulnerable.” The disparity between the comments of workers and those of the company are remarkable.
A company spokeswoman . . . said in a statement that Trader Joe’s has “the right to express our opinion to crew members about the pros and cons of possible unionization.” Trader Joe’s is hardly the only retailer to actively oppose unionization. While workers at the grocery chain Kroger are unionized, Walmart has moved aggressively to squelch organizing efforts over the years. . . . Because a union has chosen to inject itself into the lives of our crew members during this time of crisis, we have no alternative but to remind and share with our crew members the facts.”
A company spokeswoman, Kenya Friend-Daniel, said in a statement that Trader Joe’s has “the right to express our opinion to crew members about the pros and cons of possible unionization.” Trader Joe’s is hardly the only retailer to actively oppose unionization. While workers at the grocery chain Kroger are unionized, Walmart has moved aggressively to squelch organizing efforts over the years.
“Because a union has chosen to inject itself into the lives of our crew members during this time of crisis,” Ms. Friend-Daniel said, “we have no alternative but to remind and share with our crew members the facts.”
Workers also expressed misgivings about the inconsistent safety measures across stores, where some managers have banned gloves and face masks, saying they frighten customers.
“It is necessary to eliminate all lingering questions or confusion and set the record straight,” a company official wrote in an email to employees last month. “Trader Joe’s official policy on gloves is that we don’t have a policy. We never have.”
Now, however, medical experts are beginning to recommend protective equipment for retail workers. Ms. Friend-Daniel said Trader Joe’s planned to supply masks for its stores, as other chains, like Walmart, have begun to do.
Employees have also complained about delays in closing stores where workers test positive for the virus. At a meeting on March 20, a manager at the Trader Joe’s in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan told employees that a co-worker was infected. . . . But the store did not officially close for a deep clean until six days later, when Trader Joe’s announced that multiple employees had tested positive.
Employees have also complained about delays in closing stores where workers test positive for the virus. At a meeting on March 20, a manager at the Trader Joe’s in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan told employees that a co-worker was infected, according to interviews with employees and social media messages about the meeting. But the store did not officially close for a deep clean until six days later, when Trader Joe’s announced that multiple employees had tested positive.
The spokeswoman, Ms. Friend-Daniel, did not explain that delay. But the measures Trader Joe’s takes in response to infections “vary with the circumstances of the potential exposure,” she said.
The coronavirus pandemic is not the first time employees at Trader Joe’s have mobilized to change company policy or that executives have pushed back. Over the years, company officials have aggressively opposed unionization, employees said, taking workers aside to track down rumors about efforts to organize staff.
Last spring, a transgender employee at a store in Albuquerque was told they could not wear a pin showing their preferred pronouns because the regional manager believed pronoun pins “do not reflect the values of our neighborhood stores,” the employee wrote in a Facebook group for Trader Joe’s workers.
Last spring, a transgender employee at a store in Albuquerque was told they could not wear a pin showing their preferred pronouns because the regional manager believed pronoun pins “do not reflect the values of our neighborhood stores,” the employee, Ezra Greene, wrote in a Facebook group for Trader Joe’s workers.
After other workers protested, the chain started allowing pins, as long as they were only an inch in diameter. Mx. Greene left Trader Joe’s last summer.
The incident helped re-energize discussions about unionization that had simmered since 2016, when an employee in Manhattan complained to federal authorities that he was fired after managers judged his smile to be insufficiently “genuine.”
In Louisville, Mr. King said Trader Joe’s had mostly treated him well. But last week, he started a Facebook group for workers to discuss how the store was handling the pandemic. On Saturday, he was fired.
“This is not how we operate,” he said his manager told him. “We don’t operate by letting crew talk amongst themselves.”
Categories: Issues, labor and unions, Local, National, politics
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