Whole Foods Workers Form Chain’s First Union

Whole Foods workers in Philadelphia formed the chain’s first union on Monday, setting the stage for a larger organizing fight at the Amazon-owned grocer.

Employees at the company’s Center City location voted 130 to 100 in favor of joining the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776, according to a spokesperson at the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency overseeing the election.

Whole Foods has five business days to file a challenge to the results, though a spokesperson declined to say if it planned to.

“Whole Foods Market is proud to offer competitive compensation, great benefits, and career advancement opportunities to all Team Members,” the spokesperson said in an email. “We are disappointed by the outcome of this election, but we are committed to maintaining a positive working environment in our Philly Center City store.”

In a statement through Local 1776, Whole Foods employees in Philadelphia said the company had “underestimated our determination and unity.”

“For months, we faced a relentless campaign of intimidation, misinformation, and anti-union tactics from Amazon and Whole Foods management,” they said. “Despite their best efforts to silence us, we stood firm because we knew that organizing was the only way to ensure that our voices were truly heard.”

The union will include around 300 members and, barring a legal challenge from Whole Foods, will try to bargain a first collective bargaining agreement at the grocer.

If history is any guide, those negotiations won’t be easy.

Amazon acquired Whole Foods in a nearly $14 billion deal in 2017, and the e-commerce giant has gone to great lengths to keep unions out of its operations over the years. It has spent millions of dollars on hiring anti-union consultants to convince workers not to organize.

An Amazon warehouse in New York City became the company’s first to unionize in a historic election in 2022. Nearly three years later, the company still has not bargained with the union or recognized its legitimacy. The two sides remain tangled in litigation.

Amazon has also challenged the union campaign in part by arguing that the NLRB itself is unconstitutional. The lawsuit, along with a similar one from the rocket company SpaceX, could end up undermining the labor regulator and its mission.

The UFCW represents hundreds of thousands of grocery store employees around the country at major chains like Kroger and Albertsons. The union has been a mainstay in the industry for decades but struggled to organize younger, mostly non-union chains like Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s as they’ve grown in market share.

Whole Foods has more than 500 locations in North America. The workers in Philadelphia are more likely to win a contract if the union can win elections at other stores and pressure the company for a deal.

Through Local 1776, the Philadelphia workers said they were intent on winning pay hikes.

“Whole Foods must now give us the raises that they claimed to withhold so as not to influence the election,” they said.