Stopping the Next Wal-Mart--Now

    A quick break from our on-going soap opera inside the AFL-CIO to talk about, uh, organizing--you know, that thing that all this hoo-hah is about. I'm all for beating the crap out of Wal-Mart and the Walton family until it starts behaving. But, there's another Wal-Mart looming: Whole Foods. And, if we want to control another Beast before it becomes one, we better get our act together now.

    Oh, some liberals would say, they are such a nice company, selling shiny fruits and vegetables, chemical-free soaps and meats from grass-fed animals. Make no mistake about it: this is a staunchly anti-union company. The UFCW had an effort (which now seems dormant) to organize Whole Food workers and was met with stiff resistance by this touchy-feely company whose website spews platitudes that make me want to heave. You can read it all yourself by checking out the company's glossy web presentation.

    It may be a bit overstating the point that Whole Foods will match Wal-Mart's revenues or international reach. But, there are eerie comparisons to the two companies. Wal-Mart started out under the radar screen as a company pushing its way out from Arkansas into the South and rural communities. The labor movement basically ignored the company until it started moving into the retail food markets. By then, it was an octopus.

    Whole Foods is tracking a similar arc. It had ten stores in 1991 with 1,100 workers, racking up $92.5 million in sales; today, it has 167 stores in 28 states, Canada and the United Kingdom with 32,100 workers. It is now a Fortune 500 company with $3.9 billion in sales. It has 58 more stores in development. A monster is growing.

    Of course, Whole Foods is going after a different market than Wal-Mart. While Wal-Mart feeds on the poor, Whole Foods is decidedly upscale--only a solidly middle-class and above person can afford to regularly pay the prices charged. But, like Wal-Mart, Whole Foods is seeking to dominate an entire sector: upscale food retailing. Whole Foods will grind up and spit out any small business that stands in its way.

    There is one critical difference that gives union organizers a tactical advantage: Whole Foods customers. Wal-Mart argues that it brings low prices to poor people who can't afford to shop elsewhere (okay, the Beast from Bentonville actually preys on people who have no choice) and that its opponents (read: middle class people) are denying poor people the wonderous Wal-Mart benefits.

    Whole Foods, though, sprinkles its earthy philosophy on people who can choose whether to shop there or not; Whole Foods shoppers are, on the whole, people with disposable income (yeah, even a passle of those people are groaning under health care costs--and, in the future, I predict crushing debt when housing values tumble).  Get the picture? I'm not using the word "boycott" here, just suggesting that people might find other shopping options.

    We have to get off the dime on this. If we wait, we'll regret it five or ten years from now--as we now regret ignoring the once-sleepy company from rural Arkansas.

Comments

[Jordan Barab]

Shopping elsewhere doesn't quite do it unless it's part of a coordinated campaign. First, not that many people will do it, so there will be no visible message to WF. Second, aside from a moribund UFCW organizing campaign, there's no pressure -- public or private -- being put on WholeFoods. Third, although it may be regrettable, even semi-liberal people with discretionary income who may support labor in general, may not actively support a specific organizing campaign (or boycott) against their favorite store (especially a "do-good" organic store) unless they are educated about low pay, bad working conditions, etc, and the fact that a lot of the unhappy workers themselves (vs. just the union) want to organize.

In other words, a boycott (formal or informal) needs to be part of a well thought-out, coordinated campaign.

[landismom]

I agree with Jordan. I wish that UFCW would reactivate their campaign, but until they do, there's not much point in asking liberals to stop shopping there. IMO, having a boycott (informal or formal) that is not called by the workers in the store is inviting the kind of third party criticism that we can be vulnerable to.

Also, I love your blog. Rarely comment, but read every day.

[madandmovin'on]

Yes let's go after Un-Whole (Un-Holy) Foods. Meanwhile, let's not cede to Wal-Mart its false claim that its way of doing business is the only way that low wage workers can feed and clothe their families. Someone needs to do a consumer basket comparison of Wal-Mart and other stores. Wal-Mart is notorious for pushing cheap, unusable junk at the front of the door and then sucking in consumers to buy a ton of overpriced mediocre (but more usable) products as a captive audience.

[Rob]

While the UFCW appears to have let this campaign stall, there remains an active discussion forum involving current and former Whole Foods workers. Check out this website:

Whole Workers Unite

Liberal-minded people who are concerned about Whole Foods practices may wish to read some of the material there and if they would like, post a question to the workers involved to ask what they can do to help.

[Former UFCW member]

Let's also remember that for many, working at Whole Foods is a better experience than working at a union grocery store. They offer benefits, and in the northeast at least, they pay as good or better for many starting or newer workers than the union grocery stores. Young workers who don't think that they'll be at a job for years and years don't care about seniority (in fact they often oppose it) they don't care that if they work there 15 years they'll be making $22 per hour, what they care about is a job that has a good starting wage, has health care and where you get treated with respect.

You can say what you want about dignity and respect at union jobs, but when I was a UFCW member at a grocery store, there wasn't much of that. Folks hated their job, they didn't smile and for starting cashiers, we got paid sub minimum wage (minimum - dues), in a word, it sucked.

All of this is just a long way of saying that we've got more than just a problem of a non-union WalMart and WholeFoods, the retail workers union is, with some very significant, but isolated exceptions, an ineffective, blundering, criminal syndicate.

I hoped that the reason the original NUP documents had UNITE taking on retail is that UFCW has proven that they do a pretty crappy job of it. Retail is one of the most important unorganized sectors of the economy. We need to figue out how to win at WalMart, WholeFoods or even the GAP and Target -- does having UFCW involved do that?

Lots of the dissenting unions fail in lots of ways, but the UFCW is exceptional at losing at organizing AND servicing, a pretty spectacular record of incompetence. They used to be rich, but they even managed to almost lose all their real estate assets in their failure to win on the west coast.

The three salary Presidents making over $200K a year need to be purged and the organization needs to be remade. If that doesn't happen, partnering with them will only add a massive dead weight to any reform agenda.

[formerafl]

Someone should let John Sweeney and Ron Blackwell (head of Corporate Affairs @ the AFL) know about Whole Foods and their anti-union record—I used to run into them all the time @ the 14th & P store.

[Tasini]

If I gave the impression that I thought a boycott should be done on its own, my apologies. I agree wholeheartedly with Jordan that, absent an overall campaign, a boycott or even simply asking people to reevaluate their shopping choices isn't effective. It can only be done as part of an overall strategy. My main point is that there is a substantive difference between the customer base of Wal-Mart compared to the customer base of Whole Foods.