Employees at a Lowe’s Cos. store in New Orleans have petitioned to unionize the location, extending an unusual wave of organizing in the U.S. retail sector.
A labor group called Lowe’s Workers United filed a petition Wednesday with the National Labor Relations Board seeking to unionize a group of around 172 staff, according to the agency’s docket. Lowe’s didn’t immediately respond to an inquiry.
Like the organizations behind several other recent prominent campaigns, Lowe’s Workers United is an independent group run by employees, rather than an affiliate of an existing U.S. union. Felix Allen, the Lowe’s employee who filed the petition, said he and his coworkers have been talking about organizing since April. He said they were inspired by recent racial justice protests, as well as union victories at companies such as Amazon.com Inc.
“A lot of us felt like we could get this done, or at least take a stab at it and stand up for ourselves,” Allen said in an interview. Workers hope to improve pay and staffing, as well as issues like managers hassling employees for taking water breaks, Allen said.
Under U.S. law, if the majority of a workforce signs up with a union, the company has the option to voluntarily recognize and negotiate with the group, or to refuse to do so unless the organizers first prevail in a government-run election.
That labor-board election process can mean weeks of legal wrangling over topics such as which workers should be eligible to vote — time companies often use to hold mandatory anti-union meetings and employ other tactics to dissuade workers. The NLRB holds an election if it determines that at least 30% of an appropriate group of workers have signed up with the union; the union wins the election if it gets a majority of the votes.
Over the past year, unions have won landmark elections at companies including Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Trader Joe’s, Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. and Starbucks Corp., where around 250 cafes across the country have voted to unionize following an initial victory last December. Home Depot Inc. employees in Philadelphia are slated to vote Nov. 2 and 5 on whether to make theirs that company’s first unionized U.S. store.
In a ruling last year, the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld an NLRB ruling that Lowe’s violated federal labor law by maintaining a confidentiality policy restricting workers from discussing their pay.
