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.