Workers at a Whole Foods store in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, have filed to hold a union election, the first union filing at the supermarket chain since Amazon acquired it in 2017.
The union drive comes as Amazon has aggressively opposed unionization efforts and is challenging the constitutionality of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the federal labor watchdog that has ruled against the company’s anti-union actions.
“This company makes billions of dollars in profits every year,” said Ben Lovett, a Whole Foods store employee in Philadelphia who along with 300 colleagues is hoping to join the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW). “And my coworkers and I are not paid anywhere near a living wage for living in Philadelphia. I’ve worked two jobs. Many of my coworkers do two jobs, even three jobs.”
Workers at the store had organized around safety issues at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, said Lovett, but about a year ago workers began getting together to discuss unionizing in response to issues such as low pay, high workloads and intense productivity demands he compared to those reported in Amazon warehouses.
“We’ve seen the cost of living going up. We’ve seen Whole Foods raising the price of groceries. We cannot really afford to buy our groceries at Whole Foods. I don’t really know any of my coworkers who buy their groceries at the store that we work at,” he added. “We want other Whole Foods and Amazon workers to see us going up against one of the largest companies in the world. This is a scary thing to do, but we want to show other workers it is possible.”
Piper, another worker at the Whole Foods store for about three years, said the union effort has come as workers at the store feel overworked and constantly under pressure from management to be doing more.
“I know myself and a lot of my coworkers are always coming to work, we always try our best, and it feels like we’re being discouraged by leadership. It’s never enough,” she said. “I loved during Covid when we were essential workers and now it’s oh, we just work in grocery stores again.”
Ed Dupree, an employee in the produce department for eight years, said working conditions had worsened over his time at the store.
“I’ve been working here for a while, and it’s just been seeing the degradation of the workplace, seeing a lot of my co-workers new and old struggling,” he said.
A date for the union election has yet to be set, but UFCW Local 1776 president Wendell Young IV said the union expects a quick decision and date to be set by the NLRB.
“In this country, due to a conservative watering down and defanging of laws that were designed to protect workers, often employers are pretty harsh on those workers that want to organize,” said Young. He said Amazon had “done a lot to create the environment for these folks to demand better and want to have a union,” and that the union was “really proud” of the workers who were standing up for their rights.
A spokesperson for Whole Foods said in an email: “Whole Foods Market recognizes the rights of our team members to make an informed decision on whether union representation is right for them. We agree with the overwhelming majority of our team members who value our open door policy and our ability to quickly respond to the needs of our workforce.”
