Park Slope Food Coop Threatened Union-Backing Staff: Complaint

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — Workers at the Park Slope Food Coop who have been trying to form a union say that managers have disciplined or threatened them for supporting the cause, records obtained by Patch show.

A redacted version of the National Labor Relations Board complaint Patch requested through the Freedom of Information Act outlines nearly a dozen instances where staff at the coop felt they were retaliated against for showing support for the union, which some of the 76 full-time employees have been trying to form since last summer.

In some of the slights — which span from October to just a few weeks before the complaint was filed in April — employees say that managers threatened to change employee's schedules or disciplined them for alleged lateness after they showed support for the union.

In one, a manager told an employee their schedule would become "more erratic" the day after they made a pro-union presentation, records show. In another, a manager told workers supporting the union they should "have a back-up plan."

General Manager Joe Holtz said that the coop, which has hired a lawyer, believes the claims will be proven to be unsupported, according to a column he wrote in the coop's most recent newsletter.

The management, known as general coordinators, have supported the rights of workers to unionize and not interfered with their efforts, Holtz said.

"We regret that the RWDSU (Retail Wholesale Department Store Union), at the behest of some staff, has decided to pursue an aggressive path to exploring the utility of unionizing the Coop’s staff," Holtz writes. "Part of why we regret it is because it will take a substantial amount of time and money...to respond to these complaints. A more significant part of our regret is because we have worked diligently for more than 40 years to be fair and transparent with staff, and it saddens us to see this issue sow seeds of division."

Many of the full-time employees also wrote a letter in the May 23 newsletter to say that the majority of staff have "serious reservations" about the idea to unionize.

The letter, signed by 43 of the 76 full-time staff, contends that the general coordinators have remained neutral about the union efforts. Most employees, they said, believe issues should be solved within the coop and that some of them have done so without a union.

"This campaign has characterized some people who don’t want to unionize or who have concerns about unionizing as “union busters,” an accusation that couldn’t be further from the truth," the workers wrote. "Just because a majority of staff aren’t in favor of unionizing at the Coop doesn’t mean they are anti-union. Most are actually pro-union and have doubts that the traditional union model is the right fit for our very non-traditional workplace."

When Patch visited the coop last month, a few employees there declined to comment but agreed to pass the request along to others. Patch has not heard from any employees since the request.

The Union Street coop — which the New York Times once called perhaps the largest, oldest and most successful of its kind in the country — was first founded in 1973 and was officially incorporated in 1977.

The coop's other 17,000 members who are not full-time employees are all required to work at least 2 hours and 45 minutes every four weeks, or about 13 times per year.