Massachusetts Trader Joe’s Employees Battle Divisive Union Organizing Campaign
Trader Joe’s workers demand vote to oust union, blast union bosses in Congress and media
Trader Joe’s employees Les Stratford (left) and Michael Alcorn want to restore the fun and independent work environment that existed in the store before union officials sowed discord.
HADLEY, MA – Union bosses and Big Labor-allied media cheered when the Hadley, MA, branch of supermarket chain Trader Joe’s became the first unionized location in the country in 2022. But what all their celebration concealed was the fact that union officials had swept to power at the location through a deeply deceptive campaign that demonized both the company and many employees. Now many of the Hadley-based Trader Joe’s employees are fighting to kick the union out.
“Officials of this union have sowed division and smeared both our workplace and anyone who dissents from the union’s agenda pretty much from the time the campaign began to unionize the store,” Trader Joe’s employee Les Stratford told Supermarket News about the situation.
Michael Alcorn, another Hadley Trader Joe’s worker who simply wanted to have a conversation with his coworkers about the ramifications of unionizing, said that union militants “weren’t going to have a meeting with us…immediately it was like ‘you either accept the union, or you don’t, and we’re not going to talk about it all together because if you don’t accept it, we don’t trust you.’”
Now, with free legal aid from the National Right to Work Foundation, Stratford, Alcorn, and many other Hadley Trader Joe’s employees are backing an effort to vote the union out of power at the store. Stratford in August submitted a union decertification petition asking the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to hold an election among his coworkers on whether to remove the union, which contained well over the support needed to trigger a decertification vote under NLRB rules.
Because Massachusetts lacks Right to Work protections for its private sector workers, the union has the legal privilege to enforce contracts that require Trader Joe’s employees to pay dues or fees as a condition of keeping their jobs.
In Right to Work states, in contrast, union membership and financial support are strictly voluntary. A vote by the majority of Hadley Trader Joe’s employees against the union would free them from both the union’s forced-dues and monopoly bargaining powers.
Trader Joe’s Employee Exposes Union Tactics on Capitol Hill
In May, Alcorn brought the concerns many of the Hadley Trader Joe’s employees had directly into the halls of Congress when he was called by the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce to testify about coercive tactics union bosses use to gain power and stay in power.
In addition to describing the union’s vilification of any skeptical employee, he noted that union organizers tried to foist union control of the workplace through “card check” — a process that bypasses the NLRB’s secret ballot election system and lets union officials aggressively solicit “cards” that are later counted as votes for the union.
Union organizers also “made inaccurate and incomplete press releases, creating false narratives about our workplace to promote their own agenda and personal vendettas,” Alcorn said.
Workers Need More Freedom to Oust Abrasive Union Bosses
The Hadley Trader Joe’s workers’ efforts come as the Biden-Harris NLRB announced a final rule which will make it much harder for rank-and-file workers to exercise their right to vote out union officials they oppose. The final rule, among other things, lets union officials prevent decertification votes from going forward by filing unverified “blocking charges” alleging employer interference.
While the Trader Joe’s employees’ petition will be unaffected by the rule change, the new policy will likely quash or substantially delay similar efforts in the future. “The situation at the Hadley, MA, Trader Joe’s store shows exactly why workers’ right to vote to remove a union they oppose must be protected,” commented National Right to Work Foundation Legal Director and Vice President William Messenger.
“During a union campaign, union officials often employ aggressive tactics and ‘us vs. them’ or hate-the-boss rhetoric that cause division and prioritize union bosses’ agenda over workers’ freedoms and individual choices.
“That the Biden-Harris Administration stripped workers of what few rights they had to challenge union officials that perpetrate these acts shows they are on the side of Big Labor, not individual workers,” Messenger added.
Foundation Slams Biden Labor Board’s Biased Ruling in Federal Appeals Court
The following article is from the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation’s bi-monthly Foundation Action Newsletter, May/June 2023 edition. To view other editions of Foundation Action or to sign up for a free subscription, click here.
Brief contends NLRB distorted precedent to trap workers in union they oppose
A majority of J.G. Kern employees petitioned to oust the UAW, which has seen two of its former presidents (Gary Jones, right, and Dennis Williams, left) go to jail for corruption. But a biased NLRB ruling trapped the workers in UAW ranks anyway.
WASHINGTON, DC – Foundation staff attorneys recently filed an amicus brief with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals in a case challenging a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) decision reversing workers’ attempt to remove union “representation” they oppose.
In the case, J.G. Kern employees, frustrated with the United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 228 union, decided to petition to decertify, or formally remove, the union from their workplace. The workers presented this majority petition to their employer, leading to the company removing its recognition of the union.
The petition contained overwhelming support from workers in favor of removing the union. Yet, after the company withdrew recognition from the union, UAW officials ran to the Biden Labor Board in an attempt to remain in power. The Biden-appointed NLRB majority sided with the union officials by re-imposing the unpopular union over the workers’ objections.
With the case now in the federal court of appeals, the Foundation filed an amicus brief arguing the NLRB’s April 2022 ruling ignores precedent and misapplies longstanding law in siding with union officials.
Decertification Rules Already Rigged Against Workers Opposed to Union Affiliation
As the brief points out, workers looking to file a petition to remove a union they oppose already face numerous hurdles due to NLRB rules, most of which are contained nowhere in the federal statute the NLRB is charged with enforcing.
For example, a petition must be gathered outside of work hours, and outside of work-related areas. Also, unless employees use certain Board-specified language in their petition, the petition is invalid. Furthermore, employees cannot ask their employer for further information regarding the decertification process or the petition will be invalid.
The Foundation’s brief observes how workers must operate “in the dark, without help from their employer, and even if they do everything right, their efforts might come to naught through no fault of their own.” It also shows how the Biden Board has made it more difficult for individual workers to express their right to decertify unwanted, unpopular unions.
Biden NLRB Aims to Force Union on Workers Who Overwhelmingly Object
Under the Board’s “certification bar” doctrine, a union that wins a secret ballot election cannot be challenged for one year after its victory is certified by the NLRB. In this case, the UAW’s certification bar ended on October 3, 2019. In November 2019, J.G. Kern employees delivered a majority-backed petition to their employer.
The Biden Board claimed, however, that because J.G. Kern did not bargain in good faith during a three-month period at the beginning of the certification year, the employees’ majority petition was invalid. According to the Biden Board, the employer’s alleged unfair labor practices prospectively “extended” the certification year beyond its normal 12-month period.
The brief highlights the disingenuousness of the Board, pointing out that “the employees would have to divine the future to know they were collecting a petition during the ‘extended certification year.’” The Foundation urges the D.C. Circuit to command the Board to follow precedent that requires the Board to determine whether there was a “nexus” between the employer’s unfair labor practices and the decertification petition.
NLRB’s Power Grab Takes Away Workers’ Rights
The Foundation’s brief emphasizes how the Board’s decision can abolish employees’ rights guaranteed by the National Labor Relations Act. An example of that is the J.G. Kern workers’ petition, where it was only after the petition was gathered that the Board extended the union’s certification bar period.
The brief notes that usually “an employee’s decertification petition is presumptively valid unless there is a causal nexus between the unfair labor practice and the petition.” However, this is not the case under the J.G. Kern ruling.
Should the NLRB’s ruling be upheld, it “will further incentivize incumbent unions to file unfair labor practice charges to chill employees’ Section 7 ability to collect petitions,” the brief concludes.
“The NLRB’s blatant disregard for the rights of workers who don’t want anything to do with coercive unionism is on full display in this case,” commented Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Foundation. “The arbitrary cherry-picking of legal precedents to fit the Board’s agenda is outrageous, while expected, given the Biden Administration’s all-out effort to expand Big Labor’s coercive ranks.
Federal Labor Policy vs. Worker Free Choice
Newsmax published Foundation President Mark Mix’s op-ed on the Obama National Labor Relations Board’s assault on independent-minded workers over the past eight years and its effects today. Below is an exert from the piece.
Maureen Madden is a bookkeeper at Lakeside Foods, a unionized independent grocery store located in greater Chicago. Early this March, Madden filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), cosigned by every other unionized employee at the store, asking that United Food and Commercials Workers (UFCW) Local 1456 be “decertified.”
In plain English, that means that not a single one of the employees wanted UFCW officials to continue wielding monopoly power to negotiate their terms and conditions of employment.
To read the rest of the op-ed please click here.
