Why is this California Trader Joe’s pushing for a union? A rat infestation is only part of the problem

Dominique Bernardo first seen chewed up bread.

“I feel rats chewed on this,” she remembers telling her supervisor in early 2021 at a Dealer Joe’s retailer in Oakland. Weeks handed, and Bernardo mentioned she would spend the primary 30 to 40 minutes of her shift cleansing rat feces on the Faculty Avenue retailer.

It was solely after the issue snowballed and clients started returning broken merchandise that the corporate took extra aggressive measures to take care of the infestation, mentioned Bernardo, who has labored for the grocery chain for 18 years.

Bernardo sees the rat infestation — which she mentioned lastly abated almost two years later, round December — as a vivid instance of how the corporate has disregarded crew security and prioritized revenue at employees’ expense.

It’s one among many causes, Bernardo mentioned, she and different employees at her retailer are pushing for a union. The group filed a petition late Tuesday with the Nationwide Labor Relations Board searching for a union election.

Employees concerned in organizing the roughly 150 employees members on the retailer mentioned in interviews they’re searching for a union primarily to handle what they see as Dealer Joe’s disregard for his or her bodily security and monetary safety within the high-priced San Francisco Bay Space.

The Oakland retailer is the newest Dealer Joe’s location and the primary in California to hitch a nationwide push that started in Could.

Dealer Joe’s didn’t reply to requests for remark about employees’ considerations concerning the rat infestation and different office points.

Like Starbucks and REI — firms which have lengthy cultivated reputations as progressive manufacturers with sturdy advantages for his or her service employees — Dealer Joe’s has been criticized for its response to employee organizing. The businesses have been accused of a spread of illegal anti-union exercise, with Starbucks on the head of pack, accused in a whole bunch of unfair labor observe prices of unlawfully surveilling, intimidating and firing employees concerned in union organizing.

“I really feel prefer it was true at one level that Dealer Joe’s was an distinctive grocery retailer to work at,” mentioned Maeg Yosef, communications director for the union, Dealer Joe’s United. She works at a Dealer Joe’s retailer in Hadley, Mass., which was the primary within the firm to unionize.

However that started to vary as firm management has chipped away at employee advantages and morale, she mentioned. The corporate’s response to union efforts “has been something however progressive,” she mentioned.

The body of workers rallied on the BART prepare station throughout the road from the shop Wednesday afternoon, then walked into the shop to current a letter to administration asserting their marketing campaign. The letter mentioned employees see a union as a structured strategy to advocate for advantages and requested that Dealer Joe’s transfer to voluntarily acknowledge their group.

“We intend to unionize as a result of we care so deeply about our work and the relationships we now have constructed with clients, fellow crew and administration,” the letter mentioned. “As we transfer ahead on this course of, we ask that you simply act with the integrity anticipated from crew day-after-day.”

Three Dealer Joe’s shops have voted to hitch impartial union Dealer Joe’s United.

Dealer Joe’s has beforehand instructed information shops it’s involved at how a “new inflexible authorized relationship” created by a union will have an effect on the corporate’s tradition.

The body of workers on the Oakland Dealer Joe’s has been working to prepare a union marketing campaign since no less than October.

Employees interviewed mentioned they hope a union will assist to handle a slew of issues, frustrations and grievances which have amassed over time. Amongst them, they mentioned: the corporate’s inconsistent wage scale results in main pay discrepancies amongst employees; they really feel uncomfortable elevating problems with sexual harassment; the corporate has lengthy refused to implement conveyor belts on the register that will assist to ease repetitive pressure on their our bodies from unloading groceries — demonstrating a disregard for his or her security.

Employees mentioned the corporate through the pandemic slashed hazard pay, skipped raises and eroded its assured retirement advantages over the past decade. Employees at different Dealer Joe’s which have launched union campaigns have voiced comparable grievances.

Dealer Joe’s supplied a $2-an-hour momentary bump in the beginning of the pandemic referred to as “Thank You” pay, however the firm skipped advantage raises for the coinciding assessment interval from January to July 2020, the employees mentioned. The momentary pay bump rose in 2021 after Oakland required that giant grocery shops give a $5-an-hour hazard pay elevate, but it surely ended that summer season, simply as California was battered with a waves of the Delta and Omicron infections.

“It felt a bit of bit like whiplash,” mentioned Nava Rosenthal, 23, who’s labored at Dealer Joe’s for almost 5 years. She mentioned that when security shields had been taken down and Dealer Joe’s dissolved its masks coverage for patrons it felt like the corporate deserted employees.”

“Whereas we’re placing our well being in danger through the pandemic, and our households’ well being in danger, that’s how they thanked us,” Bernardo mentioned. “It’s simply so disrespectful. You’re feeling so devalued as a crew member whenever you’re sacrificing a lot to indicate up for the corporate. And the way they repay you is to take cash out of your pockets.”

Bernardo mentioned previous actions by Dealer Joe’s have had a chilling impact, making it tougher to prepare the shop.

In 2020, a few of Bernardo’s co-workers who preferred a social media publish vital of Dealer Joe’s response to Black Lives Matter protests had been referred to as into conferences and “grilled” by a regional supervisor, she mentioned. The corporate had been accused by Seattle staff of retaliating towards them for collaborating in protests, and a lawsuit alleged an worker in a Portland, Ore., retailer was fired for criticizing the corporate’s messaging.

“I feel our clients can be so bummed to study Dealer Joe’s isn’t as progressive and accepting because it likes to undertaking,” she mentioned.

Dealer Joe’s didn’t reply to questions on criticism of its dealing with of worker assist for Black Lives Matter.

To start with of the COVID pandemic, Dealer Joe’s Chief Govt Dan Bane issued a company-wide memo calling union organizing efforts a “distraction” after some staff circulated a petition pushing for Dealer Joe’s to award hazard pay. Within the letter, Bane instructed employees Dealer Joe’s supplies better wages and benefits than different grocery shops with out the burden of union dues.

That memo was cited by employees on the Hadley, Mass., retailer, who launched the primary union marketing campaign at Dealer Joe’s final Could. The Massachussets retailer employees gained their election in July. Employees at a retailer in downtown Minneapolis voted to hitch the union the next month.

In July, Dealer Joe’s introduced a slate of will increase to compensation and advantages, which was criticized as a tactic to dissuade different shops from pursuing unionization. Amongst them was a pledge to repair pay disparities between longer-term staff and new hires.

In August, Dealer Joe’s abruptly closed its solely wine retailer in New York state. The United Meals and Industrial Employees Worldwide Union mentioned employees on the retailer had been about to go public with a union drive, and accused the corporate of “egregious and blatant union busting.”

The union sustained its first loss in October, when employees at a Dealer Joe’s in Brooklyn rejected the union of their vote.

The third victory for the union, an election held in January at a retailer in Louisville, Ky., has not been licensed. The corporate final month challenged election outcomes, alleging that pro-union employees “created an environment of concern and coercion and interfered with the laboratory circumstances essential to conduct a free and truthful election.”