With a rich history stretching back to 1682, Philadelphia boasts the nation’s first library, its first hospital, its first daily newspaper, even its first zoo. Now, a tenacious group of grocery store workers wants to earn the City of Brotherly Love another accomplishment: the nation’s first unionized Whole Foods Market.
On November 22, Whole Foods Workers United officially declared its intention to unionize with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) Local 1776 and filed papers with the National Labor Relations Board.
Since Amazon bought the company in 2017, Whole Foods has undergone a litany of changes — many, workers say, for the worse. The checkout area is heavily surveilled to account for increased self-checkout (which in some stores includes a palm-scanning biometric option) and as demand for delivery orders has skyrocketed, so has the infrastructure to support it, including bringing in an army of delivery drivers and shoppers who compete with workers and regular customers for aisle space. Amazon has also attempted to integrate its own grocery brands into Whole Foods, and is debuting robot-run “mini warehouses” to encourage customers to buy more of its conventional products. Its thirst for profits and quest to dominate the grocery market has led the company to expand at a rapid pace. Meanwhile, workers struggle to keep up.
