Failure to Co-Operate: Organizing in Response to Consumer Co-Ops Behaving Badly

By James Anderson

Source: Brad Walker

Mike Woliansky, CEO of No Evil Foods, a plant-based food company with a supposed mission to eschew evil, delivered a speech to employees two years ago touting the wage increases and health benefits they had recently received and pointing to those job perks as evidence that workers need not concern themselves with business decisions. 

“I think our track record as a team and as a company shows that you can trust us, and that you don’t have to pay an outside organization” – meaning a labor union – “to speak on your behalf,” Woliansky told workers in that January 2020 meeting. “We already believe that all of your voices are powerful.” 

Lest workers get the wrong idea about where power really lies, No Evil Foods terminated employees and engaged in a bevy of union-busting tactics when workers in Weaverville, North Carolina, tried to unionize two years back. 

Echoing almost verbatim the rhetoric Woliansky used to discourage unionization circa January 2020, Eric Artz, the CEO of REI, an outdoor-oriented member-owned cooperative, recently extolled his company’s “employee inclusion networks” designed “to hear voices, to build community,” but then tellingly averred: “I do not believe that introducing a union is the right thing for REI.” 

Employees, known as “green vests” at REI, begged to differ.  

“As green vests, we believe ‘a life outdoors is a life well lived’ and in order for that to be viable and accessible to us, we need to be at the bargaining table alongside REI leadership to work out a collective bargaining agreement that works for us,” said Claire Chang, a retail sales specialist and member of the organizing committee that helped secure a majority vote for unionization with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) at REI SoHo in Manhattan. The store became the first REI location to unionize, per an early March press release from RWDSU. 

Similarly, Starbucks, a company that congratulates itself for “investing in humanity,” has seen more than 200 franchise locations file for unionization as of mid-April 2022.

Starbucks claims to nurture “the human spirit” and cultivate “a culture of warmth and belonging” while also “challenging the status quo,” but the CEO Howard Schultz prefers an established order without employees exercising meaningful say in workplace decisions. The company acknowledges employees – “partners,” as they’re called – “are at the heart of the Starbucks experience,” and despite a professed commitment to making “partners proud and investing in their health, well-being and success,” baristas at a Starbucks in Olympia, Washington, walked off the job in late March to oppose ongoing union-busting, a day after a store about 60 miles away in Seattle, where the company has its headquarters, voted to unionize. Baristas in the Pacific Northwest also set up a relief fund to fortify themselves against union-busting tactics, like cutting worker hours. 

The coffee mega-chain’s alleged commitment “to creating a culture of belonging where everyone is welcome” hasn’t stopped its higher-ups from threatening to shut down stores in Buffalo, New York, where the union drive started, or from excluding pro-union employees from meetings critical of worker representation other “partners” have been pressured to attend. Starbucks workers in Ithaca, about a three-hour drive from Buffalo, walked off the job and out to the picket lines on April 16, and they too are accepting strike fund donations. 

In contrast to the SBWorkers United approach of publicly declaring union campaigns at various Starbucks locations to generate enthusiasm and support, a media contact for RWDSU noted the retail-oriented labor organization doesn’t announce union drives prior to elections for fear it will hurt workers, making it unclear as to whether green vests across the country will share the same success baristas have enjoyed.

A presumption of progressivism associated with consumer cooperatives like REI, given their internal structure predicated upon shared ownership by members who in theory democratically elect a board responsible for governance, appears to elide as well as enable bad behavior and anti-union management, often provoking workers to organize in response. 

Wilin’ Out on Willy Street 

When Willy Street Co-op, once the largest non-union consumer cooperative in the US with two grocery stores in Madison, Wisconsin, and one in nearby Middleton, implemented a no-fault point system that penalized employees for work absences and showing up late, workers got fired and many complained. 

The co-op’s HR department initially told employees they couldn’t be involved in making decisions about the above because they didn’t have a union, according to Mike Tomaloff, president of United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE) Local 1186, the union that now represents workers at Willy Street.

Tomaloff knew the attempt by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) to organize the co-op in 2015 encountered managerial opposition and did not succeed. 

When the opportunity to unionize with the UE and embrace “rank-and-file unionism” came about, he liked what he saw and got involved quickly, not anticipating the degree of paternalism upper-level management would demonstrate. 

Cooperative businesses theoretically endorse and adhere to seven cooperative principles. Willy Street lists all of them, including “Concern For The Community,” on the co-op’s website. 

“Well,” Tomaloff asked rhetorically, “if you’re bleeding your workers dry, that’s not really concern for community, right?” 

He said Willy Street management waxed dismissive during contract negotiations, downplaying cost-of-living concerns, rejecting raises for employees who had been there a decade or more and declining to provide raises for those routinely engaged in demanding physical labor, like moving thousands of pounds of product per day. 

Sporting stickers and union colors, workers quickly put together a blitzkrieg campaign. Co-op members emailed and called in to voice support for a fair contract, Tomaloff said. People also packed the bargaining room. 

“When we got 30 people to show up in an ice storm on a Tuesday morning to stand behind us and just glower at management, it was a sight to behold,” he said. “It was beautiful.” 

He attributes the raises they ended up securing – $3.10 more than what they previously earned – in the recently settled contract to the camaraderie and solidarity workers and the broader community exhibited, in accord with those explicitly stated, if not always respected, cooperative values. 

Doubling Down on Direct Action at the Dill Pickle 

Workers at the Dill Pickle Food Co-op discovered unionization and a collective bargaining agreement were useful but insufficient in terms of improving working conditions and workplace democracy at their store in Chicago. 

“It's just been like a hard union-busting campaign really the whole time since the signing of the contract,” according to Alex Thomas, who worked at the Dill Pickle from 2019 until March 2022. 

In 2016, Jessico Dickerson, now a Dill Pickle Worker’s Union (DPWU) steward, coordinated with a few other staff members to organize the DPWU, when the climate there seemed less hostile to labor. They met up after work at a neighborhood bar, Revolution Brewing, and decided to affiliate with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), an anti-capitalist union keen on industrial democracy. The vote that established the IWW-affiliated DPWU took place in March 2017, shortly before the co-op expanded its staff and moved to a larger location.  

After the union vote, the organizing momentum dissipated as people tried to figure out their roles, Dickerson said. It picked up again when Gabe Galloway, one of the original owners circa 2009, started working for wages after volunteering hundreds of hours. 

Galloway, who became de facto union representative in 2019, said officers with the Greater Chicago IWW – the local IWW membership branch, which helped start a fundraiser to support essential workers at the Dill Pickle – advised him to recruit workers and form a committee.

“Over a long period of time, we got a majority of the workers to join and enough people that we could put pressure on management to actually sit down and bargain the contract,” he said. 

IWW officers assisted with negotiations, but frontline workers at the co-op took control at the bargaining table. They pushed for open bargaining in the store so cashiers and shoppers could see them. The idea, Galloway said, was to curtail intimidation and keep management’s outburst-prone attorney from indiscriminately shouting obscenities.   

The open bargaining encouraged workers who weren’t active at the beginning to participate.  

“We wouldn't direct them to talk or tell them, ‘you can talk,’ but they would just sort of intuitively realize that they could talk,” Galloway said. “And they would sort of their own accord start bargaining.” 

They reached an agreement in November 2020, but employees had already taken to direct action when the COVID-19 pandemic started, marching on the boss with a petition seeking more than the negligible hazard pay management offered. It worked, and they got more. 

The DPWU has coupled direct action with formal grievance procedures and successful complaints filed with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). 

“To me, that's fighting the war on like two fronts, which I think is better and more effective and scarier for the managers,” who have to deal with an impending walkout and a potentially antagonistic third party, explained Galloway, who quit the Dill Pickle last fall, after two years on the job and about a year and a half as DPWU union secretary. 

After management took away hazard pay in October 2020, workers organized to get it reinstated and to oppose managerial retaliation. That entailed social media blitzes, wearing buttons and patches, picketing, more marching on the boss and continued escalation, leading up to a strike vote. 

“We were able to secure two thirds of the votes,” Dickerson said, “although some people crossed the picket line who said that they wouldn't, but that's fine.” 

While the union regularly organizes “worker Wednesdays,” to celebrate staff and draw attention to labor concerns, always bringing in more money for the co-op, the DPWU’s two-day strike and store boycott in July 2021 cost the co-op some $35,000, according to what Thomas heard, though management never shares the books with workers. 

As “exhilarating” as the strike was, Dickerson said it was also stressful and draining to hit the pavement and picket for eight hours both days in the blistering summer heat. Tension and exhaustion mounted. Six or seven workers quit after the strike. 

Dickerson said support for direct action at the Dill Pickle took a hit, but it also picked up this past fall. 

While previous efforts to get employees reinstated did not bear fruit, workers realized a modicum of success in autumn when they walked off the job after an employee who’d been there about two and a half weeks still had not received a clocking code and was concerned about accurate remuneration. 

“And the next day, this worker was given their clock-in number,” Dickerson said.

Staff also picketed for hours outside the store during a cold Chicago winter more than once in February 2022 to inveigh against working conditions and to let people know about standing grievances against the co-op. 

Beyond the Progressive Veneer 

As Tomaloff discovered, the idea that a cooperative like Willy Street is a community-oriented enterprise is so ingrained and vociferously, repeatedly proclaimed by management and marketing campaigns that it masks the profit-driven mistreatment and devaluation of labor inside the store. That become abundantly clear, he said, when UE 1189 members in his bargaining unit wore stickers in the workplace instructing customers to ask if they made a living wage. 

“Some customers actually thought that was [something] put on by the co-op to show how well they're paying their workers,” Tomaloff said. 

And so long as it doesn’t involve giving employees greater say over the work-related decisions affecting them, consumer co-ops do engage in practices that afford ethical integument, if only on the surface, safe from any semblance of workplace democracy. The Dill Pickle, for example, just announced a partnership with the app-based sustainability company Too Good to Go. 

Insofar as management fails to make progressive changes that could address worker concerns, though, employees turn to direct action to pierce through the faux progressive duplicity. 

When interviewed for this article in March, Dickerson said DPWU members were planning another march on the boss, this time to deliver a petition for incentive pay and paid sick leave. 

“Until they sit down and communicate with us, we are going to continue doing direct action,” Dickerson said. “And unfortunately, I think the store is going to close down as a result because the community doesn't want to support an organization that's out of alignment with its values.”

James Anderson is from Illinois but now resides in Riverside, California. He's a member of the IWW Freelance Journalists Union. You can view and subscribe to his newsletter at waywards.substack.com.