Under the nose of Whole Foods Market CEO John Mackey, a unionization effort is under way at the natural-food chain’s flagship store at Sixth and Lamar. Mackey, who once famously compared unions to herpes, is aware of the effort, which would affect from 150 to 180 employees.
Fearful for their jobs, workers wouldn’t talk to Naked City to discuss their issues with Whole Foods or its union-loathing CEO. But a letter sent by Mackey to “team members” Feb. 28 sheds light on some of the concerns shared by workers in Austin and in other stores trying to unionize. Mackey’s letter describes Whole Foods’ recent elimination of bereavement assistance, anniversary and baby gifts, 401(k) matching funds, and other benefits — cuts that were “necessary,” he says, to adequately fund its new health care plan. “Our previous self-insured plan went bankrupt,” he wrote; “claims paid out exceeded premiums collected by over $7 million in 2002.” The company was able to absorb it this year, but perhaps wouldn’t be able to in future years, he says.
According to organizer Miles Anderson of the Houston-based United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 455, who’s helping the Austin workers, Whole Foods employees have lost the option of receiving flex-benefits — money they could either use for health care or receive at the end of the year as a bonus. Now families that relied on the bonuses won’t get them — and might end up getting less health care coverage as well. Mackey “hadn’t advised anyone of the bankrupt state of the fund,” Anderson said. “But he didn’t just wake up one day and realize it was bankrupt — he had to have been well aware of that problem well before it hit the crisis state.” Anderson believes the benefit cuts are unnecessary: “They’re for expansion of stores. It’s fine for [Mackey] to expand, as long as you don’t take from the employees to do it.” Indeed, Mackey cites in his letter the importance of profits to “grow and evolve” the business.
Aside from benefits, Anderson says many Whole Foods employees in Austin and across the country are starting to doubt whether they have as much say-so in the company as Mackey has long claimed. Last year, workers at Whole Foods’ Madison, Wis., store got the union ball rolling by voting for UFCW representation; campaign leaders formed a Web site, www.wholeworkersunite.org, to help other workers nationwide. And workers have recently placed ads in big-city weekly papers complaining that the company’s glossy image is a ruse. (The magazine Vegetarian Times refused to run the ad, citing its close relationship with the company.) More ominously, the National Labor Relations Board postponed the scheduled April 4 union election at the Whole Foods in Tyson’s Corner, Va., while it investigates charges of surveillance, termination, and interrogation of pro-union employees, among other illegal activities.
This article appears in April 18 • 2003.