Trader Joe’s Workers Have Won Their First Unions in America
The union organizing upsurge in the United States has reached Trader Joe’s. Two stores, one in Massachusetts and one in Minneapolis, have unionized. We talked to a Minneapolis worker about why.
In July and August 2022, two Trader Joe’s stores became the first in the United States to vote to unionize. (Mike Mozart / Flickr)
On August 12, a Trader Joe’s store in Downtown Minneapolis became only the second in the nation to unionize after winning an election, supervised by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), by an overwhelming margin of fifty-five to five. The first store, in Hadley, Massachusetts, won its union election in late July.
Instead of joining an established union like the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), which already represents workers at grocery store chains like Kroger and Albertsons, the workers in Hadley and Minneapolis formed their own independent union called Trader Joe’s United. Like the similarly independent Amazon Labor Union that won a union election at a warehouse in Staten Island, New York, earlier this year, Trader Joe’s United is taking on a major US corporation and winning despite being a brand-new organization with few resources and no staff.
Meanwhile, employees at a Trader Joe’s in Boulder, Colorado, recently petitioned for a union recognition election with UFCW Local 7. Workers at a Trader Joe’s wine shop in New York City were also preparing to launch a union drive with UFCW when the company abruptly closed their store on August 11, in what some workers describe as an effort to stop the growing campaign in its tracks.
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