Trader Joe’s store in Louisville, Kentucky, is the grocery chain’s third store to vote to unionize.
According to the National Labor Relations Board, which conducted the election, workers at the store voted 48 to 36 for the union Thursday night.
Workers at the Louisville store will now join those from two other trader Joe’s unionized stores at the bargaining table as they try to negotiate a new collective agreement. In July, a Trader Joe’s in Hadley, Massachusetts, became the first in the country to organize; A Minneapolis store unionized in August.
The unionization effort at Trader Joe’s comes amid a larger wave of organizing led largely by younger workers. In 2020, a then 31-year-old Chris Smalls organized a walkout to protest the shortage of face masks and other COVID-19 gear at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island. Jaz Brisack, a barista who started working at Starbuck in 2020 at the age of 22, helped unionize a store in downtown Buffalo, New York—the first Starbucks to form a union.
Employees have unionized hundreds of Starbucks stores in the past year, as well as Apple stores and an Amazon department store.
In the years since the pandemic, workers have increasingly flexed their muscles to demand better pay and treatment. Last year saw the highest number of strikes in 15 years, with unionized workers growing by 273,000.
Not all workers on board
But Trader Joe’s United hasn’t won over workers in every store it’s campaigned on. A Trader Joe’s in Brooklyn, New York, voted against unionization in October. And the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which is also trying to unionize Trader Joe’s stores, withdrew a petition for a union election from a Boulder, Colorado store after it failed to get enough support.
Connor Hovey, a Louisville employee and union organizer, said the vote was “a step in the right direction not just for our business, but for the company as a whole.” Employees strive for higher wages, better social benefits and safer working conditions, among other things.
Trader Joe’s did not respond to a message Friday asking for comment on the vote. The company has said in the past that it already offers a higher starting salary and benefits than other grocers.
Based in Monrovia, California, Trader Joe’s is privately owned by the families who also own Aldi Nord, a German grocer. Trader Joe’s operates approximately 530 stores across the United States