Carolyn Fath Ashby
Willy Street Co-op workers voted 249 to 40 to unionize.
Bjørn Thorson says that in 2014 management at the Willy Street Co-op asked him to help fight an effort by workers to unionize.
“I was asked to keep my ears out and my eyes out and see if I could sway people away from unionizing,” says Thorson, a produce stocker and clerk at the westside Willy Street Co-op store. Thorson agreed to push back against the campaign led by United Food and Commercial Workers.
“If someone would say something pro-union, if I was able to find any holes in their argument or anything that didn’t sound right, I was able to kinda play on that and turn it around against them,” says Thorson.
But following that failed campaign, Thorson grew increasingly fed up with how management treated workers. His thinking shifted in 2016 when managers announced during a meeting that part-time workers would no longer be eligible for benefits.
“I remember that [meeting] very clearly because I had a gel pen in my hand and I remember listening to [management] talk ... and as I was watching them I was looking around at my friends who work part time and I saw the hope leave them and they got really scared,” Thorson says. “And I didn’t realize it until I broke my pen with my thumb that I’d sliced my thumb open from gripping the pen.”
Following the implementation of an unpopular new attendance policy early this summer, Thorson contacted a representative of United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). The call triggered a second campaign to unionize the Madison food cooperative — which succeeded on Sept. 4 when more than 86 percent of workers (249 to 40) voted in favor of unionization.
Until last week, these workers made up the largest non-unionized workforce at a food cooperative.
Of the 650 union elections overseen by the National Labor Relations Board this year, Willy Street Co-op is among the largest 20 workforces to unionize. The successful vote is a rare event in Wisconsin, which has become hostile to unions. Since the passage of Act 10 in 2011, the state has seen union activity decline by more than 53 percent. In 2015, Wisconsin became a “right-to-work” state, meaning that union membership cannot be compulsory.
The Co-op unionization drive was organized by workers representing all nine grocery departments that formed an organizing committee of over 70 employees, according to committee member Sara Andrews. The union will represent non-managerial workers at all three retail locations as well as the organization’s off-site kitchen and central office.
The Co-op has recognized the union. Anya Firszt, Co-op general manager, did not agree to an interview request from Isthmus but emailed a statement saying “the Co-op has not taken any steps to negotiate a contract, but as we will learn more about the process, I expect meetings to begin this fall.”
The disciplinary policy that prompted the union campaign calls for employees to accrue “points” for attendance violations, including clocking in late and missing work due to illness — with enough points resulting in termination. This “no-fault” type of policy has come under fire by the American Civil Liberties Union for allegedly violating the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, and a class action lawsuit against AT&T Mobility argues that the policy may also violate the Americans with Disabilities Act and Family and Medical Leave Act.
“People were spurred to action due to the attendance policy, but that is really only a small part of our cause,” says Korey Peterson, who works in the produce department at Willy Street Co-op North. According to Peterson, the workers’ organizing platform includes protections for workers facing harassment, increased wages and benefits, and worker participation in decision-making.
Andrews, representing Willy Street Co-op North’s juice bar, concurs that the attendance policy “is a small part of the bigger problem of corporatization” at the Co-op, and characterizes the unionization push as an effort to align the Co-op with its progressive principles. “Progressivism can’t just be a PR tool,” Andrews says. “If [the Co-op] can’t execute its values, a union will push them to do so.”
Activists like Andrews say that food co-ops and unions make a natural fit, given their shared goals, including democratic governance and worker participation. Others argue that the nature of food co-ops make unionization efforts redundant. A blog post by the Cooperative Grocer Network (an organization that Willy Street Co-op belongs to) states that “co-ops have not historically been viewed as workplaces that needed outside third parties to provide fairness and a voice for employees.”
And yet, as grocery co-ops expand, co-op workers across the United States have increasingly pushed to unionize their workplaces. Co-op workers in Minneapolis, New York and Pennsylvania organized unionization drives in the last five years.
