Trader Joe's United

Employees at the Trader Joe’s in Hadley, MA have filed for a union. This is significant news for a few reasons.

First, this union would be the first union at Trader Joe’s. If the union push is successful, we could see momentum pick up at other Trader Joe’s locations.

Second, Trader Joe’s is a large business with many employees. If the union push is successful and picks up momentum, many people would benefit.

Third, Trader Joe’s is not the only large chain playing host to unionizing efforts. Similar efforts are underway at Starbucks and REI, to name two. If the union push achieves a measure of success at these chains, we could see momentum pick up for the same across a broader swath of industries.

Fourth – and this one is especially interesting – the Trader Joe’s employees in Hadley are opting to file to be their own independent union (Trader Joe’s United), instead of affiliating with an existing union.

Via NYT:

““Over the past however many years, changes have been happening without our consent,” said Maeg Yosef, an 18-year employee of the store who is a leader of the union campaign. “We wanted to be in charge of the whole process, to be our own union. So we decided to go independent.””

One of the biggest stumbling blocks in the way of unionization efforts in recent years has been the mismatch between the available unions and the available workforce. Many of the strongest unions in the US have traditionally been associated with industries that have been in decline (manufacturing of all stripes). The influx of new interest in unions comes from workers in industries that may have not traditionally associated themselves with the labor movement.

There is a hurdle to clear, then, on both sides of the question. Workers in these industries need to recognize themselves as sharing a common interest with fellow workers – they need to see the need to organize. And unions need to grasp the changing labor landscape and reshape themselves to meet the need where they find it. United Auto Workers (under 400,000 dues-paying members, down from a high of about 1.5 million in 1979), etc., is not going to be leading a union renaissance unless it can reinvent itself to serve a worker more broadly defined.

Reinvention, in whole or part, is possible for unions and remains a work in progress. SEUI has been making inroads with union representation for graduate student workers. For example, the recent “Faculty Forward” movement to unionize graduate student workers in the Chicago area. The union describes itself as follows:

Service Employees International Union is a labor union representing almost 1.9 million workers in over 100 occupations in the United States and Canada. SEIU is focused on organizing workers in three sectors: healthcare, including hospital, home care and nursing home workers; public services; and property services.

That description doesn’t exactly scream expertise in representing workers in academia. On the other hand, there are long established unions representing sectors of academia already. They were either unwilling or unable to represent the burgeoning underclass of graduate workers and non-tenured instructors in need of a union at a 21st century university. SEIU stepped in to fill a void. The action has achieved a measure of success in concert with the advocacy efforts by the graduate workers themselves.

The other option is to establish your own independent union. To “be in charge of the whole process” as employee Maeg Yosef says. Rather than trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, start from scratch. Less experienced support at the outset, but the goal is to forge a union more tailored to the needs of your own workplace. The recent filing to form Trader Joe’s United must be approved by the National Labor Relations Board. Let’s wait and watch to see how things develop during this somewhat opaque decision making process. Show some support!

Was it scary to start a union from scratch?

How did you know what you were doing?

What was the conversation like among employees to opt for an independent union over an established union?

How does the NLRB make its decision? What’s the process? Who/what determines the decision makers at the NLRB?

Has Trader Joe’s resorted to any union busting activity? If so, how so? Yes, it has.