PORT TOWNSEND — Port Townsend Food Co-op employees will hold an election Feb. 19 to determine whether or not they will form a workers union.
The vote will take place at the co-op at 414 Kearney St.
Three time slots will be available: 7 a.m. to 9 a.m., 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. to 9 p.m.
A union will be formed if a simple majority supports it.
Beers, a co-op employee who goes only by their last name, wrote in a text that they are looking forward to a fair and open election.
“We are hopeful that our efforts succeed, and that we can protect our labor as we are allowed by federal law, while we are still able to,” Beers wrote.
“I feel like the election is coming at a tumultuous time, one we couldn’t have really pinpointed when we started, and it only makes this movement more important to us.”
A co-op lawyer met with the United Food and Commercial Workers 3000 (UFWC 3000) last Thursday, with a National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) agent present, to discuss the scope of who would participate in the vote and when it would take place.
“The co-op and the union have agreed who will vote,” co-op cashier George Sawyer wrote by text. “Much of the meeting was Q&A with employees asking details of what it would be like if the co-op had a union, asking about how the voting and bargaining process works.”
A case file on the NLRB website shows that 80 employees will be eligible to vote, according to Sawyer, who said the total number of co-op employees is more than 100.
As listed in the case file, full-time and part-time employees from the following departments are eligible to vote: cashier/front end, facilities, float, food services (including cheese, deli and kitchen), grocery, meat, receiving, point-of-sale, produce and wellness.
Excluded from the vote will be all confidential employees, supervisory employees and guards, according to the NLRB.
Sawyer said conversations about unionizing started late last summer. Unsafe work conditions and a lack of responsiveness toward employee concerns were among the reasons cited by employees for pursuing unionization.
“Under the leadership of General Manager Kenna Eaton, the co-op is being investigated by NLRB for mistreating employees, facing its second wrongful termination lawsuit in two years, having a union vote, and is under a boycott,” Sawyer wrote. “The employees have had no power over violations of the law. Without a union, when the publicity dies down, it will all go back to ‘business as usual.’”
In previous reporting, Sawyer and Beers shared a number of stories about workplace incidents.
Employees who have organized in recent months have attended twice-weekly meetings to discuss the union.
“At the last union meeting, we did some very short education and trainings,” Sawyer wrote. “One was about distinguishing between bullying (bad), supervision (good), incivility and harassment, and what to do about them. We also covered Weingarten rights — the ability to have a union steward present during an investigatory interviews. The union keeps telling us the goal is for everyone to be treated fairly and according to due process, and it won’t protect bad workers.”
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@sequimgazette.com.
