Employees in a whole food market in Philadelphia voted on Monday to become the first trade union store in the Amazon Grocery Chain, opening a new front in the efforts of the e -commerce giant to prevent the organization of work.
Workers at the Whole Foods store, in the city’s Spring Garden neighborhood, voted 130 to 100 in favor of the organization with the Union of Food and Commercial Workers, the National Council of Labor Relations said.
Store officials said they hoped that a union could help negotiate higher wages, over the current starting rate of $ 16 per hour and better benefits. Some long -term employees, who were with Amazon Whole Foods bought the chain in 2017, said reductions in benefits and cuts to staffing levels when Amazon took over, among other changes, were sources of frustration.
But those who were leading the Union campaign hint at a wider goal: to inspire a wave of organization across the chain over 500 grocery stores, adding to trade union movements between warehouse workers and delivery drivers already fighting Amazon.
“I expect that others will follow and this will increase the leverage we have on the negotiating table,” said Ben Lovett, an employee at the Philadelphia store that has led the organization. “We showed them that it is possible to organize on Amazon.”
“This match is not over,” he said in a statement, “but today’s victory is an important step forward”.
Whole Foods said in a statement that the company was “frustrated” by the outcome of the elections, but that it had offered competitive compensation and benefits for employees and that it “pledged to maintain a positive work environment” at the Philadelphia store.
The successful offer to form a compound comes in a context of what many workers have described as a campaign of intimidation by whole food. They showed aggressive workers’ surveillance and anti -shop messages, as employees became public with their organizational efforts in the fall.
In unfair job charges deposited at the Labor Council earlier this month, the UFCW Local 1776 accused Whole Foods of firing an employee at the Philadelphia store in retaliation to support the Union Drive. The Union also accused the chain to exclude the store’s employees to receive an increase this month to all other employees in the Philadelphia.
Whole Foods said it had complied with all the legal requirements when communicating with trade unions. The company denied allegations of retaliation, arguing that it could not legally change salaries during the electoral process and that it had delayed the increase to the elections to avoid the attempt to influence the votes.
“A union is not required in the Whole Foods market,” the company said in a statement before the election, adding that it recognized the right of employees to “make a documented decision”.
The company, which has five days to challenge the outcome of the election before the outcome will be certified, will have to negotiate with the Union for a contract covering the store’s trade union workers, NLRB said in a statement, announcing the outcome.
But the victory of a Union vote does not ensure that talks go ahead. Amazon Warehouse employees who were union almost three years ago have no contract.
In 2022, Staten Island workers voted to form Amazon’s first union in the United States. It is now linked to the international brotherhood of teamsters. Amazon questioned the court’s election result and refused to recognize or negotiate with the Union. Delivery drivers, who work for third -party packages that serve Amazon, have also placed campaigns with teamsters.
Last week, Amazon said it was closing all its warehouse and work in Quebec, the Canadian province, where the unions had won among some Amazon workers and would dismiss 1,700 employees.
Amazon’s trade union impulse looks like some ways organized in Starbucks that has spread to more than 500 stores in the United States since 2021, said Brishhen Rogers, a professor of labor law at Georgetown University.
In grocery stores and cafes, employees work side by day, day by day, in conditions that often favor each other and form solidarity networks, he said. These dynamics do not always exist in warehouses, where workers tend to be under constant surveillance.
“I wouldn’t be overwhelmed,” Mr Rogers said, “if it had a snowstorm in different Whole Foods locations, such as Starbucks.”
Ed Dupree, who works at the Whole Foods store in Philadelphia and has participated in the Union campaign, said he was in contact with workers in other locations across the country interested in trade union. At least 10 other Whole Foods stores have begun to organize, he said.
The new political landscape in Washington can put obstacles for Philadelphia workers as they are trying to negotiate a contract or other stores that could submit to the Union elections. Following the embrace of Biden’s trade unions, President Trump is expected to appoint a new NLRB General Advisor, who could find it difficult to organize campaigns.
Employers usually exploit weaknesses in federal labor law to avoid achieving a first contract with newcomers, said Kate Andrias, Professor of Labor Law and Labor Law at the University of Columbia. Legal obstacles in organization and negotiation exist independently of the government’s stance on work, although companies may feel more encouraging to intimidate workers under President Trump, he said.
“We are likely to see that the law becomes less favorable to workers during Trump’s administration,” Ms Andris said. But, he added, “even in times when there have been hostile work tables in the past, workers have succeeded in organizing trade unions.”
