Port Townsend Food Co-op Employees to Vote Wednesday on Union Representation Amid Tensions with Management
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Eligible Port Townsend Food Co-op employees will vote on unionizing this Wednesday [/caption]
News by Nhatt Nichols
The Port Townsend Food Co-op employees will have the opportunity on Wednesday, Feb. 19, to vote on allowing representatives from Local 3000 of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union to collectively bargain on their behalf.
This opportunity to unionize comes after months of difficult relationships between the board, the general manager and the employees.
In a recent blog post, General Manager Kenna Eaton attempted to explain the unionizing effort. However, as one commenter pointed out, she misrepresented a few aspects of the upcoming vote. For example, she said that Local 3000 is holding the election, not the National Labor Relations Board, which is actually the entity holding the election.
In an email to employees, Director of Operations Tony Hillman also misrepresented how the process works, claiming that a nonvoting representative of the co-op will be present during the vote. In reality, both the co-op and the union can have workers help out at the voting windows, as long as they are not ineligible to be in the union; for example, a manager wouldn’t be allowed to help.
Also contrary to claims made in this email, these staff members are welcome to vote, though no one will be allowed to talk about how they voted or encourage anyone to vote in any particular way.
Eaton also publicly expressed her personal feeling at a Feb. 5 board meeting that a union would not be the best fit for co-op employees unionizing, an opinion she reiterated in an email: “My own opinion is that unions do a lot of good for a lot of people. However, UFCW is a massive organization with nearly 50,000 members in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. It represents employees at companies like Safeway, Fred Meyer, Rite-Aid, QFC and many more. I don’t think the big companies like that have much in common with our Food Co-op and our employees. Our workplace, our store and our members are unique, and I think that we can be creative in finding solutions that fit us and our challenges.”
When asked what those unique elements were, Eaton responded, “All Co-ops are unique!
And one way that uniqueness is reflected is in their diversity of organizational structures. This 'no one size fits all' approach strengthens the cooperative movement as a whole.
And while I believe that unions have been a positive force in building equitable workplaces for many, I also believe there is no one specific path towards fostering that equity.”
One way in which our local co-op is unique is that it has a disproportionate number of major workplace injuries. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, grocery stores in 2023 had an average of 1.6 cases of a workplace-related injury causing at least one day away from work per 100 employees.
The Port Townsend Food Co-op, which in 2023 had 107 employees, had a total of three cases according to their OSHA 300a report, nearly twice the national average. Although the national numbers are not available for 2024, the co-op had eight incidents that required an employee to take time off work, five times the 2023 national average.
No matter the result of Wednesday's vote, the increased open communication among staff, management, and the board is a positive development that should contribute to improved conditions for all parties involved.
