Co-op Insider Tells All
Think you know what’s going on inside Duluth’s Whole Foods Co-op right now? You don’t.
But I’m going to tell you, from my subjective vantage point as a 28-year employee. I am also a member of our union, the UFCW 1189. I am not speaking for the Co-op or the union. Telling you this stuff is a tricky balancing act because I have to not get in trouble with my employer or my union; I need both of them. So, I can’t do a document dump of work product, and I can’t use names or say anything stupid; that might create a hostile work environment or whatever, if anyone I work with reads this. But I do want to be blunt, as in, direct. I recognize that anybody taking exception to what I write here on my own time could still go to HR if it made working with me weird. So this is just me explaining it all conversationally like I would explain it anywhere in a neutral tone. If I were then to get in trubs anyway, I would need the union in my corner — but, if my fellow organized workers get pissed at me for writing this, then the union might lift my veil of protection — the union president himself warned me of such things. But I think I know where the line is, and I have to thread the needle. This is an extraordinary moment in Minnesota co-op history. Member-owners of the Co-op and the general community legitimately want to know WTH is going on, and I am well-positioned to spill the bulk organic tea, haha.
Full Disclosure
I’m also a longtime member-owner of the Co-op, and a core shopper. That’s right, I am a hippy freak devoted to expanding organic agriculture, a major front against the environmental crisis. I know it makes me uncool, but I unironically believe in the mission of this non-corporate-structure green business owned by your friends and neighbors.
In case you don’t know, Whole Foods Co-op has nothing to do with Whole Foods Market except the similar name, which Whole Foods Co-op had first. Whole Foods Market is a giant evil global corporation, and Whole Foods Co-op is an independent two-store community cooperative punching above its weight. Among the Co-op Principles is cooperation between co-ops, and so the Co-op is part of a “virtual chain” of cooperative cooperatives across the country. As a non-corporate business model, natural food co-ops represent a people-powered generational struggle to reform agriculture and the food system. All these co-ops cooperate based on the principle of cooperation.
Part of my job interview 28 years ago was a discussion about the environmental benefits the Co-op strives for as a fundamental part of its mission. I said, “Let’s save the world,” and got the job — the same buyer job I hold today. I’m not sure that direct ecological connection is explicitly drawn anymore in the hiring process, because many feel it’s just a job. And it is just a job. And maybe we can’t even save the world. But, I care that our jobs translate into more organic acreage over time, keeping tons of pesticides out of the water, growing small family farms and local food networks, and fostering climate resilience. I have quietly devoted my life to this co-op, and I’ve spent 100% of my grocery dollar here even when they weren’t paying me enough. There is not another game in town, the other stores carry organics for profit but the Co-op carries them on principle. I don’t go around preaching except now I feel I have to say this so the reader knows my bias: the environment.
I’m lucky to have a job that matches my lifestyle, beliefs, and politics. No one is to the left of me, I am here for the great socialist revolution, and I vote for pro-union political candidates — most likely to help raise the federal minimum wage to a living wage. And when I vote in elections for the Co-op’s Board of Directors, I vote for anyone who mentions the union and labor relations. When the staff unionized, it passed by a single vote, and one of those votes was mine. Don’t forget that the history of Minnesota is, in part, the history of co-ops in America. Not specific to Minnesota, but co-ops are a profoundly Minnesotan thing. And the history of unionizing our co-ops is part of union history. I have had a front row seat for a good deal of it. Here in Duluth, we noticed when Co-op Partners Warehouse unionized in the cities, and we knew it meant the Wedge would unionize soon, and all the dominoes would fall after that. The dominoes are still falling. We’re not just slinging groceries.
So, how am I going to tell you what is going on at Whole Foods Co-op right meow without getting in trub-trub? I’m going to do it by pitching it to you as a TV series. This is based on a running joke I have with a friend at work: the Co-op as a sitcom similar to The Office. Many workplaces benefit by being compared to The Office. The Co-op parody version would be called Natural Food Store, about a store named Natural Food Store or NFS (like Whole Foods Co-op is abbreviated WFC). The series collapses several years of fictionalized Co-op history into a small number of seasons:
NFS: The Series
Season One
As the series begins, the store is not unionized yet. The main characters and storylines are introduced including a wacky cast of regular customers and delivery drivers. Some staff characters come and go as they move on to different workplaces or leave the area entirely, but some staff have longer story arcs. There would be a character like me who’s worked there forever but he’s not management, because he is consistently a pain in the ass. There’s one in every co-op. He wouldn’t want to be management anyway; he sees managers coming in on their days off to cover for staff callouts, which total hundreds of hours per week in the grocery department alone. One thing he never does is come in on his days off, but he’s had perfect attendance for three decades so it’s fine. The store he works at is also his neighborhood grocery store, so if he’s not careful he can just accidentally be there every day for weeks on end. He doesn’t want to live there, so he maintains a strict work-life balance. This is how he has worked one job since 1998 and kept his sanity, such as it is. What the Co-op gets out of him is a know-it-all, short on the social graces, but he can do the job in his sleep and has literally done so.
Meanwhile, some staff do not recognize NFS as a kind of environmental organization like my character does; it is just a job for many. My character has been there, so he gets it. He flashes back to a string of independent retail bakeries he worked in California. He considered them just jobs; in hindsight he is glad he always supported small local businesses with his labor. Over the season, NFS staff grouse more and more about things like micromanaging, working “clopening” shifts, and never knowing their schedules more than a week in advance. Management is portrayed as hapless tragicomic figures. At the end of the last episode, the staff vote to unionize.
Season Two
New characters are introduced, like union representatives dropping by to talk to staff, representing them in disciplinary meetings or what have you. Some of the staff characters from season one have volunteered to become union stewards, trained by the union to know the contract, to help staff, work with the union reps, etc. Micromanaging has dropped precipitously; it is no longer worth it because staff will complain to the union and there will be a hassle. Clopens without mutual consent are gone, and schedules are posted two weeks out. Although the unionization vote was close, staff who had been skeptical come around. The negotiated pay bump was substantial enough that staff make more money than if they hadn’t unionized, even with dues taken out. That’s still how that works.
This season is characterized initially by high staff morale after unionizing. After a few years the mood dips. Management knows they have to get the annual Employee Appreciation event right or they will hear about it. In the community it has been something of a fashion to hate on NFS and some staff are not immune to that. The fact that the business is broadly progressive in nature makes it a sport to poke holes in. NFS can always be charged with not being progressive enough or green enough, even though it is the most progressive, greenest job in town. No one holds Super One, for example, to anything like the standards NFS is judged by. As the union rep characters make their rounds from NFS to other retail businesses, we see they feel guilty — most of the union’s time is spent with the nurses and the doctors. And among the retail stores, NFS is small potatoes. The show portrays scenes inside other regional grocery store chains, and they are always corporate hellscapes where actual oppression occurs. The union reps know co-op staff sometimes can’t name their own union, but staff in the other local grocery stores sometimes don’t even know they’re in a union. And from the Duluth co-op to the co-ops in the cities, union reps know: co-ops are absolutely turned up to 11 all the time.
Staff hijinks ensue as economic anxiety grows internationally. Some stewards scheme to play hardball at the next negotiation. Messages appear on the staff wipe-off board in the break room: RE-NEGOTIATE THE RIGHT TO STRIKE. And REMEMBER YOU DON’T HAVE TO VOTE YES ON A BAD CONTRACT. The contract is nowhere near being negotiated, but the message conveys grievance against the passage of previous contracts, seeding the ground to reject the next one on principle. The series portrays this being talked about at the steward-organized union meetings at Sir Ben’s, sometimes attended by the reps.
In the season finale, what management hoped to be a routine contract negotiation goes off the rails. Before the negotiations are even finished, a Vote No campaign is revealed: one morning most lockers have Vote No flyers taped to them. The staff wipe-off board in the breakroom has been filled in with large all-caps words, “MANAGEMENT IS TRYING TO SILENCE US BY TAKING DOWN FLYERS, IF THIS GETS ERASED IT’S PROOF.” My character writes on the board that the lockers are in fact, still impressively papered with flyers. Immediately two anonymous actionable insults appear against him implying he likes fascism. After weeks of tension, the actual contract vote occurs. For the first time, the staff rejects a contract — by around 80 percent — even though NFS says it’s the best offer they can make. The union negotiating team saw the books too and they agree it’s the best contract this time around. Staff say no anyway. The season ends without a contract, a cliffhanger.
Season Three
NFS is in uncharted territory. While the usual laffs are squeezed from the inherently funny day-to-day operations of the store, the union and management wonder what to do. The negotiations will have to be rescheduled and tried again.
Meanwhile details come out about the failed negotiation. The timeline rewinds a little and the failure is dramatized from several points of view. The union/staff negotiating team is composed of a union rep, a couple union stewards, and some staff members. Management’s negotiating team is composed of managers and the store’s lawyer. Over several weekly sessions, each team sits in a different room. The management team sends its starting position over to the staff team. The staff team sends back its reply, batted back and forth like that. Over a few episodes, the staff team is able to improve some benefits and things. But NFS financials are opened up and it isn’t great. NFS is operating at a loss this year with the economy hurting the business as well as epic callouts.
My character’s buddy at Positively 3rd Street Bakery says there’s no callouts there. Granted they only have a baker’s dozen of employees while NFS has like 125. 3rd Street Bakery is also a co-op, but they are a worker-owned one, so they feel a direct connection to the health of their business. If one person starts calling out, everybody starts making less money, and that gets noticed. Staff do not talk about this at NFS, where one can be late 30 times with little consequence. That’s on both the union and NFS, who fairly negotiated those terms together. Now NFS has some of the most lax attendance policies in the National Co-op Grocer’s Association, and by far, the most call-outs in the Midwest corridor.
Management submits a contract proposal that they say is the best they can do this time, and they stick to it. It is a proposal for a three-year contract, with periodic boosts to the starting wage that gets it to 17 bucks an hour in year three. No one is happy about it but the numbers are the numbers.
The union rep has an idea based on long experience: when management is tapped out, and the union has played all its cards, the way to squeeze one last Hail Mary bump out of management is to offer a full committee recommendation. That is, in exchange for better pay, the staff negotiating team offers to unanimously endorse the contract to the employees. In past negotiations, even though the contracts all passed, there were sometimes holdouts on the union team who didn’t like the contract they’d wound up negotiating, and who campaigned against it. Nothing wrong with that, but a full rec is valuable to management — the optics could help the contract pass so NFS moves forward.
But every member of the union negotiating team must agree to it, otherwise management is offering extra money for nothing. The full committee rec is a chess move that essentially extracts a vow from staff negotiating team members to Not Campaign Against the Contract.
The union rep asks them all if they agree to this, and they all say they do. Presented to management, the store lawyer verifies it by asking the staff team members again if they all agree. They all say they do. But the big reveal at the end of the season finale: someone on the staff negotiating team is fighting dirty.
The other members of the staff team, who all negotiated in good faith, are stunned. And management is stunned. Because one of the union stewards on the team, who it turns out is also a member of the union board of directors or whatever, showed the store financials to staff and a steward or two in support of the Vote No campaign. The union has now — theoretically — committed an unfair labor practice.
Season 4
Chaos. The contract is resubmitted and voted down again by similar high margins as last time. The Vote No campaign is shown to have been unnecessary, as the economic anxiety storyline comes to a head; with these numbers the contract would have been voted down even without the Vote No campaign. The staff and the store are holding on by their fingernails. My character looks into what happened during the failed negotiation and it horrifies him. He wants everyone to have a living wage, and, NFS doesn’t have the money. And, the majority of staff digs in their heels: why should they accept a contract they don’t know they can live on? Even if NFS has no money, that’s not their problem.
Ironically, some staff hate the union as much as they hate NFS. They use the union, which allows them to hurt NFS by voting no. But they would just as likely vote to decertify the union. For now, the ball is back in NFS’s court.
In one episode, staff schemes are hatched about how firing managers could free up some money. A steward points out there is no leverage to force that in negotiation, which is a two-way street. The steward is demonized as not having solidarity. According to Reddit, NFS is Ukraine. Some staff say they will “informationally picket,” embarrassing NFS into making a higher offer, but the planned actions fail to occur. The implication is that Vote No is sheerly economic, but the haters have taken it as a broader mandate which actually has shallow support.
Technically management at this point is allowed to impose a contract, but they don’t want to do that because they need to document to the owners that they are trying everything else first. The union reps don’t think there are enough votes to actually strike, which needs 90%. And in this case, staff would not be financially supported by the union even if a strike vote succeeded. If management were denying human rights, it would be different, but it’s a pay dispute. One of the stewards tells my character, “Some union members would cross a picket line anyway.” Staff are using the union, not the other way around. Even if the union kicked them out for crossing a hypothetical picket line, the purple-state-adjacent politics do not make that a serious threat. Not in this economy.
The only violence my character fears is violence from the small faction of employees who hate the store as an institution. Presumably it was one of these who wrote the veiled arson threat on the staff wipe-off board in the breakroom, approvingly quoting the West Coast arsonist who burned down his workplace in revenge for not making a living wage. Members of this faction tell the union reps, “We want the store to fail.” They want my character’s job to fail. Do they want expanding organic agriculture and local food networks to fail? At one point one of these nihilists is a steward contributing to hate posts about the store, and contributing to the same Vote No campaign supported by staff which now leaves the union legally exposed in its bad-faith negotiation aspect.
My character reads the union constitution and sees it commands us not to undermine the union, and not to undermine the basic tenets of democracy. He thinks the union has done both, because try as he might with the union president, the union steward-board member faces no accountability for lying to their own negotiating team — union lying to union, not to mention to the NFS lawyer during our otherwise sacrosanct duty to negotiate. My character did not join the union to watch it play dirty against his fellow union members, not to mention against his community co-op. It’s solidarity versus cooperation.
Not only does NFS now have the option to make an unfair labor practice complaint against the union, but the staff negotiating committee can no longer use the offer of full committee recommendation, now effectively ridiculous. Dishonesty in our process removed an arrow from our quiver. Maybe the damage is only cosmetic but it looks terrible. The third round of negotiations is pending as NFS bends over backward instead of filing an unfair labor complaint against a union that coyly winks at dirty tricks.
My character tells the union president, in an email cc’ing all the reps and every union employee, words to the effect of, “I wouldn’t vote for you if you were running for dogcatcher, and let all within the sound of my voice help vote you out for how you have mishandled this situation.” Some reps hold the union president in low esteem over this episode too; the constitution and the bylaws specifically allow him to remove stewards, if not board members — so, why didn’t he send a message by removing steward-status from the person who played dirty, who is still seated on an active negotiating team?
The implication hanging in the air as the season ends is that the union president’s inaction constitutes a low-key union endorsement of dirty tricks against the greenest, most progressive business in town. My character realizes with dread: if NFS can be parodied as a ridiculous Office-style sitcom, the union can be too. The union was supposed to save us, but it is subject to the same problems as NFS is: institutional inertia, the management bubble, and bureaucracy. Is my union screwing up my co-op?
Season 5
Who knows where the writers might take it! My character has a buddy who used to work at NFS, until the union poached him to be a rep among the Twin Cities co-ops. And this guy has a monologue in the first episode this season: “Co-ops tend to have the angriest grocery store employees. Maybe because co-ops hold themselves to a higher standard, so they naturally disappoint the idealists drawn to them? But what happened in the cities is, staff played hardball and forced co-ops to pay higher wages. The co-ops responded with hiring freezes — not replacing staff who matriculate out. Now the staff, reduced to skeleton crews, are furious about that. And the union has fewer dues-paying members than when they started. I don’t know what the solution is.”
Episode two: A union-curious employee goes to a union meeting and finds it’s just bagging on people, and winds up saying, “The shrill vibe is worse than the low pay.” They are later called by a co-worker who literally tells them you’re either for us or against us.
Besides meetings, the only other way staff have to communicate with each other as a union is the steward-moderated Signal chat, with like 30 anonymous people on it. But it is haunted by trolls. People who disagree with the trolls about tactics get called “collaborators.” The comedy turns to horror.
The rest of the season is pending.
An index of Jim Richardson’s essays may be found here.
How about the episode in season 2, where upper management fired the deli managers (prompting nearly all deli staff to quit in solidarity), which led to a massive drop in revenue which continues to this day? Also in this episode: NFS starts ordering more food products from Mega-Food, Inc, contrary to co-op principles.
Not to mention that Jim is most likely the person that led to the collapse of the deli by reporting a fellow staff member for a friendly comment made to a customer that he deemed to be inappropriate giving HR the ammunition it needed to decapitate the department. Posting his rants around employee areas, always self-righteous and devoid of any context from his coworkers because he never talks to them about any of this. Passive aggressively disparaging fellow coworkers efforts to fight for the bare minimum. Poisoning the well. Now this clown show.
This isn’t fully related to this post, but seeing this I had to comment.
As an ex-deli employee, it genuinely crushes me what happened to it. I genuinely liked my job, loved my coworkers, and for the most part I felt seen and appreciated by the department management. They stood up for us to upper management — as much as they could — and I think that’s what got them in the end.
Yes, there were flaws, but that’s just being human. But they gutted the department and tried to start from scratch. Staff morale went into negatives, and left us with no direction on what to do. They didn’t communicate with us at all. One day I came in and was told by my coworker that our managers are on “extended leave of absence.” That’s all the news I got for weeks until we were told they were no longer employed.
Every shift was a guessing game and I felt like I was always walking on eggshells. All my coworkers quit or, because they couldn’t just fire them with union protection, got bullshit corrective actions until they couldn’t deal with it anymore and quit.
We didn’t even know what to tell customers for a while, until they told us to say that we’re “having staffing issues, but will be up and running again soon.”
There’s a lot more I could share, but there’s a lot of context and backstory I’d have to include, and honestly I’m just so done with this. What happened was unfair. Upper management destroyed the department, and I hope they feel regret as it repeatedly fails to get back on its feet.
So, this might be the only (evidently) substantive report the public gets about what goes on between whole foods management and staff and you chose to ignore everything from the management’s side, completely blame staff and the union and offer nothing other than “you kids don’t know how good you got it” when you’re sitting on three decades of raises? Whether you like it or not, you are in a unionized workplace, and you are a worker. That dynamic means that true solidarity is how you protect yourself and get things done. Even if people make mistakes, push too hard, don’t push hard enough, whatever. You don’t go poisoning your brothers’ and sisters’ efforts and turn the public against the staff because you want to tout your sense of superiority in the vanity press. That is neither solidarity nor cooperation. That is just 🐀 behavior.
What does the main character hope to accomplish with this? He reports as though he has an objective bird’s eye view of the situation. Might I suggest that it may be blind, biased, and a gross overdramatization of events that he himself had a hand in making dramatic to begin with?
The main character’s perspective is appreciated, his service to the co-op and the community? applauded. However, there is as much over wrought finger pointing and conjecture in this post as there is truth.
The co-op isan amazing institution that does so much, but if we can’t pay a starting wage competitive with KFC then it’s all an experiment in feeling good about ourselves. That’s valuable of course, but a moral high ground claimed on the labor of an underpaid work force is, to me, indefensible. Why not join a monastic order? Sometimes I look around at my material circumstances and think at least the Benedictines have free healthcare.
Maybe you and I put up with it because we knew our belief systems couldn’t accept working anywhere else. I’d still rather work there than any other job I’ve had.
Wow, another narcissistic rant from Jim Richardson; what a surprise! Who would’ve thought he would spew absolute garbage about our union and our organizing efforts at the Whole Foods Co-Op in Duluth! Folks, don’t believe the hype. As a co-op worker, though, I won’t share any details because negotiations are ongoing to get us a solid contract. Jim’s self-obsessed accounting here of what is happening and of what has gone down is highly questionable. We’re fighting for a great contract and things have not been going well and Jim’s critique of union officials, shop stewards, and grassroots organizers on the shop floor is not accurate (to say the least). I wouldn’t trust his account as far as I can throw it (or flush it).
I was going to leave it at that, but I can’t.
Jim. We have our internal disagreements and it’s a workplace where a wide array of perspectives hold space for each other. This expose of yours is extremely selfish. We have all listened to your concerns with the process and how it’s been handled. Believe it or not we respect you and value your opinion. Maybe not everyone, but a lot of us.
We have worked tirelessly for a year to build consensus within the bargaining unit. Hundreds and thousands of conversations. With such high turnover it’s damn near impossible, and it’s been dramatic, but we keep moving forward.
Maybe it’s difficult to imagine, but despite missteps by union employees and stewards, despite management refusing to budge on wages, we are still trying to move forward with respect and understanding.
Labor law is complicated, a 23 million dollar a year business has a complicated balance sheet. We are, all of us, even the most competent, honorable, and knowledgeable among us, capable of making mistakes, being wrong, or being blind to consequences. Not every infraction needs punishment, not every mistake needs to be aired in public.
Despite our differences, we are still in active negotiations, and if not for the events and actions since May, our coworkers would now be in a contract most overwhelmingly agreed did not work for them. Instead of saying “what next?” and participating in a productive conversation, you have sat on the sidelines looking backward while maligning people who genuinely like you despite yourself.
I am absolutely saying “what’s next?” and participating in a productive conversation. You’re the one saying “Not every mistake needs to be aired in public.” I value transparency, unless there is a secret union inside the union running covert ops in my name — I am not in solidarity with that, I denounce and renounce it.
Mistakes need to be owned up to, a reasonable standard that we demand of the Co-op, don’t we? I also feel that many staff don’t know what happened, and so I am trying to get the word out, and I have to go around my own comrades telling me not to say what happened.
Our fellow union members on our negotiating team, have you asked them how they felt having their work torpedoed by a comrade? Are they and we by extension owed an apology? If the Co-op had lied to us in negotiations, would you still say bygones? Are you saying we’re not doing that again? Or we are doing that again? You recognize the self-inflicted nature of the wound to our side’s credibility, and the need to prevent it in the future?
To move on from the topic, I need clarity and assurances I have not received, so we are having that discussion here in my safe space, far from the open sewer of the Redditverse and the Signal chat. I stand by my statement that this is a formative moment that will go down in Minnesota Co-op history, and let history judge our contributions to it. I stand ready to account for my mistakes as part of the record, and to hold you (whoever you are), and the Co-op, to that same standard. It is not selfish to advocate for a better, stronger union, it is in fact selfLESS to open myself up to the firehose of misinformation and bad faith personal attacks on display here in the comments (gestures around). This is solidarity? What are you personally doing to lower the temperature of the rhetoric? One idea would be to advocate for taking down the Reddit hate-posts that some of our stewards facilitated. I’m happy to be wrong about that or any fact, please correct me on the facts — but you are advocating for “looking forward.” The Redditverse tone of “Oh god why won’t anybody help us” is often, about easily-countered narratives, but to go over there and fight about it with the angriest people at the Co-op is toxic to me. So I have brought it here, demanding accountability and full transparency from both sides.
Now, tell me where the money is and what is our plan to get it? We’ve seen inside the books. Are you saying our negotiating team is doing a bad job finding money in the books? Have you told them this, have you told the union this? Are you saying the union is wrong when our reps affirm that there’s no money? Are you saying the Co-op is fraudulently hiding some large amount of money, and presenting us with cooked books? If so, I would be the first to go to law enforcement. So but I assume you’re saying there is a plan to force the Co-op to restructure the business by eliminating management positions, and that’s where the money is? Is there a spreadsheet where the numbers add up? I want to see it or it’s vaporware. What is the plan for when the Co-op imposes a contract after the next “No” vote from staff? Does the staff know this will be the result? Does the staff accept that if we embarrass the Co-op into paying us money that’s not there, that a Co-op hiring freeze will be the result, as we know from what happened in the cities? Is there a dispute about this analysis? It’s what I expect and so I’m saying it, and so when it happens, no one will be surprised when it results in better-paying jobs, but fewer of them. That’s where this is going, right? Is it selfish of me to do extra work because of hundreds of hours of callouts, why doesn’t solidarity mean encouraging people to come to work for the health of the business, and the subsequent ability to provide better raises? Imagine if the union affirmed that coming to work was good for wages, like the culture at 3rd St. Bakery does. I want my co-workers to make bank so I am working hard as I can, for the health of the store, my co-workers, and the community. But I’m selfish. Thank you to staff, customers, and Co-op owners who let me know they appreciated my essay.
What a massive pile of who the hell cares. Stock my vegetables or get a different job. I want produce, not whining. Why have you worked there for so long? What other marketable skills do you have besides stocking shelves? Maybe it’s time to move on. New city, new horizons?
Oh, Container aka Chester Knob aka Vicarious – Whether it’s pandemic denial, or global warming denial, or a labor issue like this, you show a stunning lack of concern for anyone other than yourself. These are important jobs and, as with other, similar jobs, the workers deserve a living wage. It’s absurd to suggest that everyone suffering low wages should just re-train and move up the ladder to something else, somewhere else. Society needs grocers and janitors and truck drivers and retail clerks, etc., and they deserve our respect, and a decent wage, not self righteous scolding from someone likely blind to his own privilege.
“… suffering, low wages.”
Is someone holding a gun to their head? Who is responsible for you, Dave. Others?
Who is responsible for your well-being, Dave? Me?
You are literally the only thing in the entire universe that is responsible for your own well-being.
Privilege? Do you have any idea where I came from, Dave? No, you have absolutely no idea whatsoever.
Has the world ended yet, Dave?
Please give me the date so I can plan accordingly.
This rant by the multi-decade co-op shelf stocker shows that he does not have enough self borne intelligence to make anything of himself.
Instead, like all people of his persuasion, including you, Dave, he takes to a public forum to subconsciously blame his surroundings for his unsatisfactory life.
Dave, take some responsibility for yourself.
Shelf stocking expert: I’m quite sure that if you gained some more education, you could get a better job that paid you more money, and then you would have more to think about than how oppressed you are by those who have overcome.
If you need me today, I’ll be on the land that I purchased with the money that I worked for, enjoying myself to no end in beautiful nature.
How do I get this land? I worked for it. I overcame. I did not complain. I did not blame others for my position. I worked. I obtained. Completely on my own.
Miraculous!
You know, sometimes I miss working at the co-op. Other times, not so much…
It was an honor and a privilege to work with you, hope you’re well.
I just can’t with this. Jim is so cringe. Working here at the co-op and seeing what’s been happening, all I’m going to say is that his story or essay or whatever the hell you call it is majorly wrong. There’s so much falsehood in there and it’s defamatory. Shame on y’all for publishing this crap. Screw Perfect Duluth Day. Screw Jim Richardson. I dare you to publish my comment!
To the general public: I think you can see what I’m talking about.
To the haters: Thanks for coming by and showing the public what the vibe is like. As union members are you in favor of lying during negotiations? Did you even know it happened before I told you about it? (You’re welcome.) Imagine if the Co-op had been caught lying in negotiations, you would be screaming about it. Now imagine signing your name to your opinions like I sign mine, haha, jk.
Re: the deli: My understanding is the union supported the independent investigation into deli management based on complaints — by our fellow unionized workers who we should defend — about unfair treatment. I heard it was cliquish such that allegedly deli management’s favorites got the choice tasks. The investigation then allegedly turned up violations of policy, so deli management (incl. the unionized asst mgr) got let go, painful for everyone because they were well-liked. But the union can’t help you if violate store policy. This ended the alleged unfair treatment, and then the favored clique all quit. Commenters here are mad at the Co-op for defending union workers who the investigation found had allegedly been mistreated. Yes the deli is still being rebuilt from scratch. But what if it was you complaining of unfair treatment by your manager, and an investigation proved you right, and then your fellow union members started screeching about it as if you were in the wrong? Would you not want the Co-op and the union and to work together successfully to fix it, even if it wasn’t pretty? You are throwing your fellow union workers under the bus; are you complainers therefore also in favor of union people lying to other union people during negotiations? Where is your solidarity? You just want a cudgel against the Co-op. But you should be able to make and win your arguments without smears or conspiracy theories. Since it was all confidential you can just make stuff up, and the Co-op can’t refute it by definition, and neither can the union who know all the deets
Jim, you are not the arbiter of truth you portray yourself as. What you are is a bitter, privileged man who is insufferable to be around and has some sort of superiority complex. You wonder why so many people who know and have known you are commenting on your mischaracterization of this whole situation, but lack the ability to self-reflect long enough to grasp any semblance of an answer. You spoke to no one before you wrote this because, for you, you have all the answers already. Who would know any better than Jim Richardson? I truly hope that you’re able to see your post for what it truly is one day, because not only are you the one throwing people under the bus, you’re the one driving it and then throwing it in drive and reverse time and time again.
If anyone has harshed the vibe at Whole Foods Coop, it’s Jim Richardson. His rude and often offensive behavior constantly sours the mood around our workplace. And on top of his generally off-putting persona, he’s now taken it upon himself to talk junk about his co-workers and about our hard work trying to organize a reasonable contract so we can feed our families and pay our bills. Leave it to a privileged older white man from Texas who owns his own home in an increasingly expensive city to just crap all over our union efforts. Jim’s fabricated narrative here on PDD misses the mark on nearly every count and paints a false picture of what has transpired during our union organizing and contract negotiations. He hasn’t reveled anything, other than his own biases. If anyone from the general public is reading this, please understand that what Jim has laid out here in his fictional sketches is not correct. In brief, we’ve been trying our best to advocate for ourselves and management has consistently attempted to demoralize our efforts and undermine our generally positive approach. And yeah, people are upset about how we’ve been treated by management. If you go and knock down a beehive, and then you kick it around on the ground in the mud, you should expect that the worker bees will be upset by your actions and that there will be advocacy from the workers on their own behalf in response to your actions. We welcome public support to get a better contract for ourselves, one that we can actually feel good about, and one that will help us meet our needs in an increasingly tough world! We’d love everyone’s support out there in Duluth land! Thx!
More ad hominem attacks on me for giving my opinion. I’m on your side and I have declared how I vote. We have a system at work for you to complain about my work behavior which I am happy to talk with you about in HR if you’re serious. I have occasionally pulled people into HR myself when I feel meanly treated, it’s a valuable tool. Meanwhile I have already spotlighted my own defects (know-it-all etc) and my unity with our cause of a living wage and a stronger union. What I dispute are our side’s tactics and rhetoric. Now the whole town can see it in these anonymous comments to me publicly stepping out of line, that’s what it’s like on the staff breakroom wipe-off board sometimes, and it’s really bringing my essay alive for the reader. It’s like a subreddit in here now. But everything about me is public and has a 1,000 word story attached to it, so you can’t hurt my feelings or my argument by saying I’m from Texas for instance; my Texas stories have already been told in Duluth street publications. I got here quick as I could. It’s funny to not be considered a local after 30 years celebrating the town. Meanwhile where’s the money? Why are you tearing me personally down when our union has opened up the store’s books twice now and we know there’s no money? Not just speaking to you. If we catch the Co-op cooking the books, that would be so epic and I’m here for it. Until then it remains a fantasy. Are you saying you don’t trust the union when they confirm there’s no money…? I don’t get it. And there’s no way for us all to talk, either, something the union could improve. So here we are. Are you disputing that our side played dirty? Are you saying it’s justified to need to have a fed observer now watching our every move at the table, a completely unforced error? How does that make our union stronger? Please everyone, engage with the material. I know you hate me, but what is the plan? Saying I don’t care about you feeding your family is mean. The implication is evil. Can you see why I am correct to publicly state that I fear violence from my fellow union comrades, based on this sea of rhetoric that spawned the veiled arson threat? Why not beat me up, if what you say is true? All while my text shows I am with you? The situation is so out of control I am calling for the president of our union to be replaced; he could have affected the dialog in very positive ways; instead he must think the union benefits from a workplace vibe that treats your local food co-op like Amazon, I can’t figure it. I’ll run against him myself. This is essentially a political dispute in the union and I would like your support. I do not fear violence from Co-op management, I fear it from my co-workers and union comrades. So I spoke up. If you think I like being the lightning rod on this issue, you’re wrong. But once you’re dehumanizing me, I have to say something. Someone at work came up to me the other day and said, “I read your essay, and I agreed with some of it and I disagreed with some of it.” So I said, “Let’s have a discussion.” That discussion could also be had if you disagree with all of it. Thanks to my co-workers and to the customers who have expressed their support. Pro-Union, Pro-Co-op.
Good Lord, use paragraphs. If you want people to take you seriously, write seriously.
“Haters”: this is an antiquated rape-whistle term.
I don’t think anybody hates you. They are just not impressed.