ITHACA, N.Y. — Workers at GreenStar Food Co+op’s flagship store have launched an union organizing effort, largely driven by a desire to expand employees’ voice in the operation of the grocery store.
The union drive’s organizers sent a letter to GreenStar’s management and council, or board of directors, on Friday announcing their intention to form a union.
“We believe that organizing a union is the best way to make sure that workers at the co-op are able to have a voice at work and fully participate in making Greenstar the best place to work it can be,” the letter said.
GreenStar management told The Ithaca Voice that it intends to recognize the union if workers choose to vote for one.
The employees plan to file for a union election with Workers United Upstate New York, which unionized Lexington Co-Op Markets in Buffalo in December 2022. In Ithaca, Workers United has unionized Gimme! Coffee, the Sciencecenter, and three now-closed Starbucks locations. All three closures have been contested in court for being illegal, one of which a judge has ordered to be reopened.
GreenStar’s flagship store, located on Cascadilla Street, has over 120 workers. Positions that would be a part of the bargaining unit include delivery drivers, stockers, kitchen workers, and department leads. Only managers would be excluded from the bargaining unit.
GreenStar began as a modest bulk-food grocery store that formally open its doors in 1971. It has since grown to have about 150 employees across three locations in the City of Ithaca. GreenStar has about 13,000 co-op members that can vote on the co-op’s business decisions, according to GreenStar’s website.
Workers tried and failed to unionize GreenStar in 2019 under the Communication Workers of America. The current union drive only includes the Cascadilla Street store, but could grow to include the co-op’s other two locations, according to organizers.
David Meyers, a delivery driver at GreenStar and a member of the organizing committee, said he’s been working for the co-op for about a year and half. He said the company has become “more corporatized” in recent years.
Meyers said the co-op’s management has become less receptive to employees’ scheduling constraints, and have instituted stricter time-based performance metrics in the grocery department.
“[Management] is trying to imitate an Amazon warehouse, where you’re timed for how long it takes to do something,” Meyers said. “And there’s so much flexibility that’s needed to make a lot of different parts move together.”
Meyers said turnover has increased in recent months, which has pushed workers to unionize.
Franklin King, who has worked at GreenStar for just under two years and is currently a perishable groceries buyer, said he feels that staff complaints are not heard by management.
He described having meetings with management to discuss issues like inadequate staffing levels that don’t result in follow up or follow through.
“No communication, no change in any of the situations we’ve brought up,” King said.
King, who is Black, said he has felt tokenized in GreenStar’s efforts to promote diversity among its staff. King’s image has frequently been used in marketing photos for GreenStar.
“It just felt like I’ve been disrespected and used, being a man of color at the co-op, to be used by GreenStar to promote and facilitate diversity, when in actuality there is none,” King said.
King, who is a member of the organizing committee, said his main motivation to unionize is to improve communication and action from management.
“I just want to have a voice along with my other co-workers at the co-op,” King said. “I love my job, I love GreenStar. I just want better communications, more transparency with management, and more accountability.”
GreenStar General Manager Jeff Bessemer spoke with The Ithaca Voice about an hour after he received the organizing committee’s letter on Friday. He said he congratulates workers on the work they’ve already done to organize the union drive at GreenStar.
Bessemer managed multiple food co-op’s on the west coast states before moving to Ithaca to manage GreenStar in 2022. He said he has experience working with unions in his previous management roles, adding that “unions absolutely serve a really beneficial and important role in our society.”
“That being said, as a co-op, we are a democratic organization, and we want to absolutely respect the democratic process,” Bessemer said. “If staff choose to vote for a union, we will absolutely support and recognize that choice.”
Organizers are currently collecting signatures for union authorization cards. GreenStar employees will be able to hold a union election if 30% or more workers sign union authorization cards. If over 50% of votes are in favor of unionizing, then Workers United will be able to represent GreenStar employees in collective bargaining.
Alternatively, if a majority of GreenStar workers sign the authorization card, the store’s management could voluntarily recognize the union.
Asked if GreenStar would recognize the union in that instance, Bessemer said he did not have a response at the time, citing the fact that he had just received a staff’s letter shortly before he began to interview.
Commenting on King’s complaints, Bessemer said it was “the first I’m hearing of it” and that any worker can always request to not be used in marketing materials.
Bessemer said he thought GreenStar had made “great strides in being inclusive and diverse” but added that “we have progress to be made, as every organization does.”
Bessemer emphasized what he called “fantastic” benefit programs and competitive pay. GreenStar’s starting wage for its employees is currently $17.63 an hour, as well as access to three health insurance plans. GreenStar workers are also given up to five and a half weeks of paid time off a year as well as two holidays when the store is closed, and five floating holidays, which are paid days off that workers can decide when to take.
He framed unionizing as an opportunity to make GreenStar “an even better” place to work.
Addressing the issue of turnover raised by staff, Bessemer said the summer months are “always the highest turnover time. He said that while the co-op has adopted some time-based performance metrics, GreenStar “absolutely has no intention of trying to [imitate] Amazon.”
GreenStar hit financial straits during the COVID-19 pandemic, and from 2020 to 2022 it was unclear if it would stay open. Bessemer said the recovery of the co-op has in part been because of improving efficiencies. The organization budgets for “less than a 1% every year,” according to Bessemer.
He added that GreenStar has “been profitable and growing our sales, and that’s really due to everyone on staff doing a really fantastic job.”
Will Westlake, an organizer with Workers United and an Ithaca-area native, said GreenStar employees want to unionize in order to improve communication, transparency, and accountability with management, as well as bolstering employee protections.
“The desire to unionize has come out of a real need and a spirit, really, of cooperation and wanting to improve the things that people on the ground have noticed are going wrong,” Westlake said. “Not necessarily in the working conditions — there’s certainly some of that — but also just in the operations of the co-op and making sure that GreenStar runs in the best way that it can.”
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