Grocery workers at a North Side Trader Joe’s filed for a union election Monday. If a majority of the approximately 140 eligible crew members at the 3745 N. Lincoln Ave. store vote to unionize, the location will become the first unionized Trader Joe’s in Chicago and the fifth nationwide.
The filing comes amid continued appetite for organizing amongst service industry workers. In Chicago, workers at Starbucks and REI have held successful union votes over the last two years, as have staff at coffee chains Intelligentsia and La Colombe.
Unlike staff in most other nascent service industry unions, the Trader Joe’s workers have organized independently under the name Trader Joe’s United, without affiliating with an established labor organization.
Company spokesperson Nakia Rohde said Monday that Trader Joe’s respects “our crew members’ right to choose” whether to unionize or not.
Grocery workers said they were seeking higher wages, more paid time off, clarity over workplace policies governing discipline and promotion and protections for their existing benefits, which include health care for some employees.
“I shouldn’t have to be living paycheck to paycheck still,” said Taylor Powers, a Trader Joe’s crew member who has worked for the company for five years and makes $22.50 an hour. “And that’s the reality for me, as it is for a lot of other people that are working there.”
Powers, a member of the workers’ organizing committee, said she typically receives raises of 75 cents twice a year and has received a bonus a few times, but finds the raises are barely enough to keep up with the cost of living.
“When rent rises, when my utilities rise, when the cost of food rises,” she said, “it never seems to put me ahead. It always seems to keep me exactly where I am.”
Powers, 29, said raises are performance-based and the criteria for what justifies a raise or not is unclear.
Rohde said that with performance based raises, the average Trader Joe’s worker receives raises of 7% over the course of a year.
“We have a written performance evaluation that they see ahead of time, they know what they’re working towards,” she said.
Trader Joe’s workers including Nigel Brown, foreground from left, Brett Kershaw and Bulat Schamiloglu walk to the store to announce the filing of a union election, April 7, 2024, in North Center. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Rohde cited other benefits offered by the company, such as retirement benefits and health care coverage for some workers.
The first Trader Joe’s to unionize did so in 2022 in Hadley, a town in Western Massachusetts. Since then, workers at stores in Minneapolis, Oakland, Ca.; and Louisville, Ky., have also voted to unionize, while staff at two stores in New York City voted against unionization. The unionized locations represent a small fraction of the company’s 545 U.S. grocery stores, six of which are located in Chicago.
The Chicago filing comes as the grocery chain has pushed back against worker organization within its ranks, saying at a National Labor Relations Board hearing earlier this year that the structure of the labor board and its administrative law judges is unconstitutional. SpaceX and Amazon have made similar arguments in recent months.
Trader Joe’s challenged the labor board’s constitutionality during a hearing over unfair labor practices officials alleged it committed in Massachusetts and Minnesota, including allegedly illegally firing an employee, providing poorer retirement benefits to unionized workers, disciplining workers for wearing union insignia and threatening worsened wages and working conditions if staff unionized. The case is awaiting a decision from an administrative law judge.
Trader Joe’s general counsel Kathryn Cahan told the Tribune Monday that the company had not filed or joined any lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NLRB and that it did not intend to do so.
“At a hearing earlier this year we offered an affirmative defense, but that was not an argument,” she said. “It was a opportunity to preserve our legal rights under the law,” she said.
Labor board officials on the West Coast issued another complaint last week alleging the company threatened, interrogated and disparaged workers at its unionized Oakland store.
The grocery chain has also faced complaints over alleged unfair labor practices in Kentucky and New York, including allegations that it shuttered a wine shop in Manhattan because workers there were organizing. Hearings in those cases are scheduled to take place this spring.
Trader Joe’s workers wear buttons as they announce the filing for a union election, April 7, 2024, in North Center. (Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune)
Cahan declined to comment on pending litigation.
Nigel Brown, a 12-year Trader Joe’s employee who works at the North Center store, said the company’s response to union organizing has been surprising on a “public-facing front.”
“This company has a great public image as someone who takes care of their employees,” he said. “And this is directly critical to that notion.”
Cahan said “as a company, we don’t have a public-facing image.”
“There’s no difference between who we are in the office and who we are in stores,” she said. “We all wear Hawaiian shirts and name tags. And we make decisions as though there’s a customer looking over our shoulder at all times.”
Staff at Trader Joe’s are known for being outgoing and friendly, often complimenting customers on their grocery choices and making small talk during check out.
That’s an expected part of the job, Powers said.
“A lot of the time, it can be authentic,” she said, “if we’re all being taken care of.”
