You’re the first Whole Foods store to file for an NLRB union election under Amazon’s ownership. What led to this decision to unionize?

I’ve been with the company for a long time. I’ve seen a lot of the changes. We had been trying to organize in some capacity since the early pandemic. It kind of fell through because it was a really tumultuous time, and this time around it was just the right people coming together at the right time. And the company is just getting worse.

I joined later than Ben and Ed; I was recruited sometime in the summer. What I’ve learned through this organizing experience from my coworkers is that, especially after the company was acquired by Amazon, and especially after COVID-19, workers have been slowly losing benefits that they previously had.

We’ve lost things like gainsharing, bonuses, and stock options. We’ve been operating on skeleton crews. People have been feeling the pressure to keep metrics up while having less resources and support to do so. In general, we’ve been really strained as workers, and we’re really feeling the heat, and we’re not getting paid enough. We’re not getting the support we need to do our jobs well. I think that’s a problem in general for American workers, but especially those working under Amazon — it’s known for doing this.

Another thing that we lost was health care for part-timers, and it seems like there are more and more part-timers now. So at least half the workforce, probably more, doesn’t have health care through the company.

I did this because I think everyone needs to have a union. Wherever I work, I am going to try to organize. As a society, we need workers to be organized to fight the power of these huge monopolies, and workers are the ones who make these companies exist. Without us, they would have nothing. They really depend on us, and so we have the power to force them to change. That’s a big goal, but it starts with trying to organize your own workplace.

We don’t get what we deserve or anywhere close to it. Right now, we’re generating huge profits. Whole Foods is a multibillion-dollar company, and we’re not paid anywhere close to a living wage. People have two jobs. We’re on government-assisted housing, health care, and food stamps. And it’s disgusting that we’re making these profits for a company and don’t really have any free time.

When did the organizing start at the store, and what did that look like? What was the timeline?

I’d say we started maybe a little over a year and a half ago. The main way we organized was just talking to folks. When Ben came to Whole Foods, he was new, but he was also super friendly. I’ve been there a long time, so a lot of people know me; a lot of people knew me from the previous campaign we tried to get going, so it was easy.

You talk to folks — you gauge people on the issues. The first thing we did, for a long time, was just try to figure out what people felt strongly about. It was things like pay and benefits. It’s things like environment, worker safety, and accommodations. We have people with special needs and disabilities.

It was just talking to folks. We had a petition, and then at some point scrapped the petition; I think people were [apathetic about] signing a petition. So then we said, “Okay, let’s ask people how they feel about a union.”

When we switched to that, it was a bit easier to talk to folks. Most folks understood what a union was or had an idea of it. Once we did that, we were building an organizing committee. We were getting coworkers to come out to meetings. We were having meetings not too far from the store, and then it just grew to getting signatures for [union election cards], starting in August.

When we started mapping who was interested in a union, our organizing committee grew a lot, because just asking someone to ask another person if they were interested was a nice, small ask. I think that’s when our organizing committee started growing, because people were doing a little task and then feeling like they were part of it, and they started coming to meetings more. That’s when Leeya got involved.

I think the most effective way of recruiting people was just having real conversations with your coworkers, just one-on-ones, heart-to-hearts. One way you could spot someone who would likely be in support is if you heard them complaining at any point about any type of work-related issue — which happens all the time, because it sucks for most of us.

In the process, you build real connections with your coworkers, and it generates a lot of trust and support. Our grievances become a uniting force, and it makes people trust each other. Then people became more interested in our cause, the more that we talked about how we want to change things for the better for all of us.

It especially became easier once we had something more tangible, like the card signings; that definitely made it easier for me. Once I had something tangible, people were like, “Oh yeah, this sounds great. Something might actually be happening.”

Were there specific working conditions that might have been a catalyst for the organizing? You alluded to some of these earlier, talking about the differences you’ve experienced since the purchase by Amazon. But maybe there’s more to say.

I used to work in a department — pre–pandemic, or around when the pandemic started, it was fifty people, and now it’s thirty, and we’re doing way more business. When I first started, it was around sixty or seventy people. So you see the shift in numbers.

Then the company is also getting tighter on labor. When I first started, if you were full-time, you would literally work forty hours. We used to have paid thirty-minute breaks, and now you have to clock out. So now your weekly numbers look like thirty-seven hours, and sometimes management will cut them down to thirty-six or thirty-five.

They’re pinching pennies more and more. They aren’t hiring people. When someone leaves, if they’re full-time, Whole Foods won’t replace them with another full-time person. It’ll try to get two part-timers in, and sometimes it can only get one part-timer in. With those kinds of things, the workload is increasing.

There’s a lot. The kind of culture that existed in Whole Foods has deteriorated to where people are just not feeling it. A lot of people are annoyed with the attempts that management tries to make to encourage people that work there.

That sums it up pretty well. Even if somebody can’t put their finger on exactly why, we’re overworked and underpaid.

Luckily, my department isn’t too intense, but I know a lot of other departments are pushed really hard. For grocery, there’s a lot of lifting and bending and long hours standing. So it’s very possible for people to get injuries. I know e-commerce is pushed. There’s this metric called “units per hour,” where workers have to shop a certain amount in a certain length of time, and management keeps raising the amount of products workers have to shop for, and they’re not really given the support to be able to do that. I know one of our coworkers got an injury in the process, and the company tried to make her continue working after she got that injury.

That’s actually happened many times.

I’m not surprised. There are a lot of safety concerns; there’s little regard for our health.

While the company did raise the Whole Foods minimum wage to $15 an hour — I believe in 2018 — it didn’t really make a huge difference, because, like Ed said, they keep rolling back hours. So even though they raised the wages, we’re still losing hours, so we don’t get paid much anyways.

I mostly close, and I’ve mostly been a closer since I started working at Whole Foods. We definitely don’t have enough closers, and it’s a lot more work to close, and you don’t get paid any more for it. And there’s only two closers at a time. So sometimes, if the other closer calls out, you have to close alone, and it’s not like they’re paying you double for closing alone. You just get paid the same.

I have a lot of grievances as a closer, but even if I wasn’t a closer, there are a lot of issues working at Whole Foods. I’m sure there are people in many other departments that have to face that same type of strain.

Amazon is notoriously anti-union. Have you faced any anti-union tactics from management since beginning the fight for a union, or since you submitted this petition?

In my department, since they have identified at least two people who were very prominent in the media [as organizers], they started doing these . . . I call them “not-so-captive audience meetings,” but they’re captive audience meetings. They just tell everybody, “You can leave whenever you want. You don’t have to stay.”

Management started doing those right before we filed, I think, because I think they heard something, and it spooked them enough to start getting folks out. Then we filed, but then a lot of people started chiming in during these meetings, so they shut those down. I think they just started them back up.

What happened in those meetings?

Management was doing these things called “store huddles” leading up to Thanksgiving, where they were telling people about the sales. They were telling people about highlighted items and stuff like that throughout the store.

I went to one the day before they started adding the union-busting part, and I was curious. They stuck to this, “Sale on flowers, 25 percent off.” But one of them was like, “We’re partnering with such-and-such nonprofit to reduce our carbon emissions, blah, blah, blah” — that type of boring stuff.

And there’s cookies. So people go because they get cookies.

What changed with the union busting?

They would have someone from this regional pseudo-HR department called TMS [Team Member Services] come in at the end and read from a sheet about why unions are bad and why Whole Foods doesn’t think we need a union. It’s just every unimaginative anti-union talking point you could think of, and they’re serving it up lukewarm for everyone to ingest.

Any other union-busting tactics?

They took my team lead. They shipped him to another store. I remember I was working one night, and I was on my break, and unfortunately the break room is facing the team lead office. We have an open door, so we hear everything. But I saw my team lead go in there, and they had been bugging him since this all started. Like, “[People are trying to organize] because you’re not doing your job, or because they don’t like you”; they’re telling him all types of weird shit. It was terrible.

So they took him in the office, and I guess they told him, “You’ve got to get the fuck out of here. You’re not fired, but you’ve got to leave the store.” They sent him to another store; they sent the meat team lead to the same store. Eventually they got rid of the store team lead and the bakery team lead, on Leeya’s team — but they fired her, which is even more insane.

So they have all these weird regional people, other store team leads [coming in]. They’re flying people in from places like Florida to union bust. They have all these regional [managers] from TMS just smiling in your face and asking you how they can help you. They’re printing up goofy posters. It’s a bizarre experience.

Did Whole Foods move or fire the team leads because they were supportive of the union?

I think they’re doing that as a strategy to break up relationships with the team leads and their teams. If you’re too friendly, or you’re not manager-y enough, they’re trying to weed those people out and put in some assholes.

Some team leads definitely were more supportive than others.

As Ed mentioned, my team lead was fired right after Thanksgiving. The timing was very suspicious, because it happened right after they had privately voiced support for our movement. I don’t know how higher-ups found out. Maybe they didn’t; maybe they just expected her [to be supportive].

In terms of other union-busting tactics, they’ve also put posters and flat-screen TVs everywhere off the floor with the same talking points that the TMS people read. “Unions make you pay dues. Unions are a business. Unions don’t let you talk to your boss or let you have your own career.” It’s everywhere.

Most people find it silly, but management knows what works. Amazon, like you said, is very anti-union. It pays the best union busters to do this.

I think the posters aren’t flipping many people, but they are making people tired of the subject of unions. So that could potentially be in their favor as well. If people are just tired of hearing about it, they’ve got another month and a half until the election to keep doing this.

Then all the regional people that are coming around — a lot of times, like Ed said, they’d just be like, “Hey, can I help you with anything?” “Nope.” “Okay, see you later.” But some of them are pretty good at what they’re doing too. They’re pitching in; they’re trying to act like the nice person who is here because your former team leader wasn’t nice and we’re fixing it. And I think firing of the store leaders or pushing them out was also intended to just make us uncomfortable and intimidate us.

Now that you’ve filed for an election, what’s the next step for you all?

Right now we’re just trying to maintain and expand support. We have an election coming up on January 27, so we still have some time to go. So it’s just maintaining the onslaught, talking to our coworkers, making sure they’re informed properly and really know what the union is and what it stands for.

And trying to get, hopefully, the public involved soon too, because a lot of people all over the country, all over the city, are showing support. It would be really good for our coworkers to know that this is happening for a reason, and there’s a lot of support for it.

We’re basically just trying to keep the momentum going and to do our part to counter the anti-union messaging. It’s probably going to get stronger in the coming months. We’ve got to stay strong.

Should you win the election, what do you imagine are the main issues you’re going to be fighting for in a union contract?

Pay is one of the main issues that a lot of people get around. Getting benefits for part-timers is another thing. Aside from that, just better protections for team members and workers, from leadership and from any incidents that happen at the store, like safety.

Ben and I, and our larger organizing committee have talked about it, and we want to change the game for retail grocer contracts. We want to bring something forward that’s super strong — that not only makes our lives better but that other stores can benefit from. Those who are union supported can probably get something better in their stores as well.

We won’t be able to do that just from our store alone. Pretty much everyone we talk to understands that. I get the question all the time, “Are other stores doing this?” And we know other stores are very interested in doing this, so we need them to also organize and join this fight so that we can get a really good contract.

I would say organizing a union is about giving workers a voice and power to force management to do things that it wouldn’t do otherwise. Specifically, when we do that, we’re going to get higher wages; we’re going to get better job protections.

I think Whole Foods is trying to divide younger team members from older team members, and we want to be clear that older team members will benefit just as much. There’s a cap on how much your wage can rise. If you’ve been here for a long time, you just can’t get raises anymore. So we want to eliminate that cap.

Then older team members, I think, are at a higher risk of losing their jobs, because technically they’re costing the company more, and the company is moving toward part-timers more and more. Ed has heard one of the regional managers, or whatever her position is, saying that longer-term term team members use up the labor budget, so they want to get them out of here and replace them with two part-timers with no health care. So job protection is a huge thing.

Outside of the obvious things like fighting for better wages and benefits, I think one of the overarching goals is to start a movement, not just for Whole Foods Markets but for grocery stores around the country and even workers around the country. The United States used to be a country of unions. Across the country, workers’ rights are being eroded, and that’s not going to get any better during the incoming Trump administration.

I think fighting for a union is the beginning, or could be the beginning, of a movement for workers’ rights, because the incoming government is not going to be protecting our rights. We have to take matters into our own hands and do something about it. I can only speak for myself, but this is my way of trying to do something about it.

What have you learned from the organizing process? And what do you see for the future?

Something I’ve learned is that Amazon really underestimates its workers and our skills and creativity and compassion for one another. It really thinks we’re replaceable robots. And that’s completely incorrect. Everybody I work with is so funny and interesting and fun to be around. We’ve organized this ourselves. This is just workers who happen to work for Whole Foods going up against Amazon, and that’s pretty amazing. I don’t think Amazon expected that.

We’ve only been growing even during all this union busting and anti-union messaging. It seems like other Whole Foods are also in a similar place where they’re ready to organize. They’re sick of how they’ve been treated. Even if you look at the Whole Foods subreddit, all of it is completely dissatisfied workers complaining about how they’re treated all around the country.

The hubris of the wealthy often catches up to them.