Trader Joe’s Votes to Unionize, Joins Growing Trend

Trader Joe’s employees at a store in Hadley, Mass., have voted 45-31 to unionize, becoming the first location in the company to do so, according to the National Labor Relations Board.

The election marks yet another victory for working people and continues the promising trend of unionizing efforts across the country. The petition for the election was announced in June, with workers expressing a desire to have more say when it comes to compensation, benefits, and workplace safety.

“We would like to have a system that guarantees accountability from management,” 

said Jamie Edwards, a Trader Joe’s Crewmember. 

“A system that guarantees our benefits won’t be stripped away whenever they feel like it. But, overall, it’s about us having that power, and being able to make those decisions as a team.”

The election results achieve the first step towards that end. 

Labor Movements

But for the workers in Hadley— a small town located about 100 miles west of Boston— the fight for a union began in May, when workers issued an open letter to company CEO Dan Bane. The letter cited concerns about pay, benefits, and safety.

The letter, dated May 14, was posted through the workers’ social media pages under the name “Trader Joe’s United.”  

The 81 workers at the store — called crew members by the company — were eligible to vote in the election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board.

The letter claims that two years ago, in March 2020, Bane sent a letter to the employees of Trader Joe’s. He asserted that unions were “falsely” claiming only they can protect the pay and benefits employees “currently enjoy”.

A Contract in the Works 

In a statement to the press, a Trader Joe’s spokesperson said, 

“We are prepared to immediately begin discussions with union representatives for the employees at this store to negotiate a contract. We are willing to use any current union contract for a multi-state grocery company with stores in the area, selected by the union representatives, as a template to negotiate a new structure for the employees in this store; including pay, retirement, healthcare, and working conditions such as scheduling and job flexibility.”

Trader Joe’s may be the latest company to see a successful attempt at unionizing, but their effort comes on the heels of several other labor victories around the country.

A Growing Wave of Labor Victories

The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has seen a 58% increase in union representation filings over the past year alone, as well as a 16% increase in claims of unfair labor practices.

In December, a Starbucks in Buffalo became the first of its company-owned U.S. locations to form a union. Since then, at least 150 of the 9,000 company-run U.S. stores have voted to unionize, with 10 stores rejecting the union. 

In January, engineers and other Google workers announced that they had formed a union—the Alphabet Workers Union— named after Google’s parent company, Alphabet. It represents about 800 Google employees.

April saw Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York vote to unionize, marking a first for the retail giant.

In May, video game workers at a division of game publisher Activision Blizzard voted to unionize, making them the first to create a labor union at a large U.S. videogame company.

What’s Next for Trader Joe’s Hadley Location?

The Hadley location employees are celebrating their organizing victory, but now comes the task of coming together for contract negotiations.

“Today, Trader Joe’s Hadley became the first unionized Trader Joe’s location, ever,”

the group said in a statement Thursday.

“We now begin the difficult work of sitting down at the negotiating table as equals with our employer, and securing a contract that will benefit and protect us, the crew, instead of the company’s bottom line,”

the statement continued.

The corporation has more than 530 locations across the U.S., with 10,000 employees and an estimated 2022 revenue of $13.3 billion.

Workers at two other Trader Joe’s locations have begun their own unionizing efforts as well. More Perfect Union reported Thursday that workers at a location in Minneapolis had filed for a union election, following the vote in Hadley. Workers at a Boulder, Colorado, store filed an election petition with the National Labor Relations Board on Tuesday.