Editor:
In the Aug. 8 Journal, I wrote that the Co-op hired a right wing, anti-labor law firm to guide their negotiations with the employees’ Union and to attend all the bargaining sessions (“Mailbox”). I observed that is an unnecessary, adversarial, uncooperative, unfair act — since the union does not bring its lawyer.
Recent events confirm this. Bargaining sessions have been tense and contentious. There is no sense of cooperation. The lawyer is condescending to the union reps, the manager loses her temper, and the management-board takes a hard line that threatens workers’ standard of living. This combative atmosphere has made this year’s negotiations the most combative and protracted in recent history. This is the result of the adversarial, anti-labor position that the lawyer brings to the management-board side. The lawyer also profits financially from difficult, protracted negotiations, because he is paid for each hour they drag on!
The management-board has destroyed cooperative negotiations to such an extent that employees must circumvent the cooperative process and enlist public support for their negotiating position. They have collected 1,500 signatures to leverage the obtuse board.
I wrote a letter to the Co-op News on Aug. 19 to alert members to this. I received no editorial response, and my letter was not printed. This suppresses dissent and deprives members of important information.
This refutes board member Tim Silva’s pious claim in the September Co-op News that “all Co-op owners are always invited to weigh in on what the Co-op will become.” Silva and his board are paying a reactionary, anti-labor, anti-community, anti-cooperative lawyer to fight Co-op employees. Yet he proclaims the Co-op has an ethical concern for community.
It’s time to stop prevaricating and cheerleading. Time to change policy — and personnel.
Cooperation with employees and community requires progressive politics of cooperation.
Carl Ratner, Trinidad
This article appears in Water’s for Fighting.
Why is it that the Co-Op is spending MY MONEY (I’m a member) to hire a right wing cadre of lawyers to defend itself against those awful mean Union workers? Well guess what? I didn’t sign up for that. I signed up for a place where I could by high quality food at reasonable prices, and where the workers were treated with respect, paid well, and enjoyed great benefits. If the Co-Op can’t deliver this, than Eureka Natural Foods is just up the street. They may not be Union (there’s not a single business is this county that shouldn’t be) but their prices are sometimes much better. But this Co-Op is not run like any other Co-Op I’ve been a member of, which is very disconcerting to me. I say this to you – board members that I elected — if you don’t treat the Union right, if you don’t call off the hounds, you will lose a lot of members. People who belong to Co-Ops tend to be Progressive/Liberal lefty types. This board sounds like a bunch of right wing Repub-litarians to me. And I can’t stomach that.
This is bull shit. Unions representing supposed “co-op” employees. You actually think the Union doesn’t have lawyers working on their side writing their greedy policy? Get real! In Brattleboro VT the coop is the real deal–there are no unions. The people voted the unions out of their co-op in Portland or Eugene maybe Ashland…
As long as you have the large grocery store mentality through the unions grubbing money to the tune of a 15% pay hike this year on the North Coast for it’s employees — as a little insight the co-op has raised employee pay 5% for the past three years. Now the union wants that to triple this year?
The bent of your article is obviously slanted in a direction of the workers but not towards the organization as a whole. You should consider supporting the management. The co-op employees have it way better than most grocery stores and if you look more closely you’ll see that the agenda of the union is to put the small grocer like co-op out of business. It’s clear to me that at Albertsons they haven’t lobbied like this. So why do you think their playing such hard ball with our whole foods?
Just keep up you hard work and see how happy Caliman’s gonna be when the co-op is owned by big grocery!! Meanwhile I’ll be growing my own food..