Whole Foods workers in Philadelphia are trying to form a union

Workers at the Whole Foods in Spring Garden are taking steps to unionize, frustrated by the working conditions and wages that leave them feeling they can’t even afford to shop in the store where they work.

They join a wave of organizing efforts by pockets of workers at large retail companies, including Whole Foods parent company Amazon, where distribution-center workers have called for better working conditions and some have initiated unionizing campaigns in recent years.

The Spring Garden store’s organizing workers on Friday filed a formal petition to unionize with the National Labor Relations Board. Their petition said the union would include 300 employees.

Whole Foods is “making billions of dollars in profits, and they’re not paying us a living wage,” said Ben Lovett, who has worked at the store since March 2023 and makes an hourly wage of around $16.80.

About a year ago Lovett, who works in the prepared-food department and picks out e-commerce orders at the 2101 Pennsylvania Ave. store, started meeting with colleagues outside of work to organize.

“Half of us can’t afford the things that we put out on the sales floor,” said Edward Dupree, who has worked there for eight years and makes roughly $20 an hour. “It’s frustrating.”

Employees are also seeking better health benefits. In 2019, Whole Foods announced that it would cut part-time workers out of its health-care coverage, raising the minimum working hours to qualify from 20 to 30, Eater reported at the time.

While Dupree, as a full-time employee, qualifies for health-care coverage, the company’s contribution to the plan has decreased over time, he says, and he’d like to see it go back to what it used to be.

A spokesperson for Whole Foods said in an email Friday that the company is committed to listening to employee feedback and that it provides “career advancement opportunities, great benefits, and market competitive compensation.”

“Whole Foods Market recognizes the rights of our team members to make an informed decision on whether union representation is right for them,” the spokesperson said. “We agree with the overwhelming majority of our team members who value our open door policy and our ability to quickly respond to the needs of our workforce.”

Whole Foods has fewer workers employed at the Spring Garden store now than previously, Dupree said, so employees have an increased workload.

“We’re doing a lot of business right now, and we are running on like a skeleton crew,” Dupree said, specifically referring to the produce department, which had roughly 50 workers pre-pandemic and now has some 30 people, he said.

Lovett spends part of his time at Whole Foods fulfilling e-commerce orders, which entails walking through the store and collecting items off shelves. It’s “heavily surveilled” work, he said.

Workers are supposed to follow a “pick path” around the store while they complete orders, which indicates in what order to gather items. It can be faster to take a distinct route, Lovett noted, but there are repercussions for that.

“When managers catch us going out of the ‘pick path,’ we are written up or disciplined for that,” Lovett said.

Orders must be filled quickly because the company tracks the number of items a worker picks up per hour, he noted. That standard of measurement known as “units per hour” has increased in the last year, from 80 items per hour to around 90, he said.

“Even very competent and experienced and skilled shoppers can’t reach that every single day,” Lovett said. It’s physically unattainable for a significant portion of workers, he noted, and becomes complicated when shoppers stop employees to ask them questions.

“They practically have to sprint throughout the store,” Dupree said.

Employees would also like accommodations for physical comfort, such as standing pads or seats at registers, Dupree said.

Workers at the Spring Garden Whole Foods are looking to join the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union Local 1776. The UFCW has over a million members across the country and Canada and includes workers employed in pharmacies and grocery stores and in retail, among other positions.

If Whole Foods doesn’t voluntarily recognize the union, the next step to unionizing would be to hold a union election.

Whole Foods workers in Philadelphia have organized in the past, but this group is taking a less precedented step by pursuing an official union election.

Employees at distinct locations around the country reported that they were asked to leave the store when they showed up wearing “Black Lives Matter” face masks and pins. Protesters rallied outside the company’s outpost on South Street in 2020 after workers there experienced similar treatment.

Whole Foods, which got its start in 1980 and is based in Austin, Texas, has seen workers try to unionize elsewhere in the United States.

In 2002, workers in Madison, Wis., voted to unionize in part in response to a dress-code issue, pay, and rising health-insurance costs. The following year, the company withdrew its recognition of the union in line with a petition from workers, according to Whole Foods.

Lovett, who hopes to become a public school teacher one day, believes that workers organizing is something that’s needed across industries.

“I don’t think the problems that we’re having at our store are unique to Whole Foods at all,” Lovett said.

He said the Philadelphia Whole Foods group has been inspired by other workers, including employees at Starbucks, Amazon, and Trader Joe’s who have unionized and Philadelphia stadium workers who have gone on strike this year. He said he hopes this Whole Foods store’s unionizing effort will also inspire others.

“We’re doing this not just for our own benefit of workers at this store,” he said. “We really want this to inspire other Whole Foods workers, other Amazon workers, and any worker that sees this that we are going up against a really powerful company: Amazon.”