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About Northwest labor press. (Portland , Ore.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (June 1, 2018)
NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS | June 1, 2018 | PAGE 9 ...How much did New Seasons pay its union-busters? From Page 1 Byrd grew up loving New Seasons; it was where his family shopped. So he was thrilled to get a job at the Williams store in August 2016. Living rent-free in his parents’ basement and work- ing 15 to 25 hours a week, he could afford to attend Portland Community College. But the company lost its halo for him a year after he began. When he started, the company handbook promised a review and a raise af- ter 12 months. On Aug. 5, 2017, his one-year anniversary, he pre- sented himself to his manager, asking about the review, only to be told that the company had changed its policy, and now the review and raise would come af- ter 18 months. “That day I went around the store talking loudly and angrily,” Byrd recalls. “And someone who was involved [with the union campaign] heard me complain- ing and told me I needed to start going to union meetings.” [With support from the grocery union United Food and Commercial Workers Local 555, a group of New Seasons employees had been quietly gathering support.] It was the first Byrd had heard of a union effort at New Sea- sons, but he already counted himself a supporter of unions. He had walked the picket line when his mother, a teacher at Reynolds School District, went on strike. And as a student at Grant High School, he’d been part of Portland Student Union, a support group that formed to support teachers as they pre- pared to strike. Surely New Seasons, with its progressive reputation, would respect its workers enough to let them determine on their own whether to form a union, he thought. Then in late November, the anti-union consultants arrived at his store. In an emailed statement attrib- uted to co-presidents Kristi Mc- Farland and Forrest Hoffmaster, New Seasons told the Labor Press that Cruz & Associates was hired “to provide staff with the unbiased information they need to make well-informed de- cisions.” But, of course, that’s not what they did. Recordings made by workers at two of the meetings — shared with the Labor Press — show that Cruz and at least three other anti-union consultants spent the hour questioning union motives and warning of strikes, dues and less cordial workplace What New Seasons’ union-busters said New Seasons execs said repeatedly that the company brought in the labor relations consultants Cruz & Associates to “provide staff with the unbiased information they need to make well-in- formed decisions.” But several workers recorded the sessions and shared the recordings with the Labor Press. In the recordings, some employees — taking seriously New Seasons’ vaunted “speak- up” culture, made it clear they weren’t buying the line that these meetings were just “informa- tional.” “Don’t you specialize in union avoidance? I saw that on your web site,” says an employee in one of the recordings. “My job is to help companies and employees as a whole,” Cruz replies. Here’s some of what Lupe Cruz and other consultants told workers in the hour-long meetings. “New Seasons is not against unions, but …” When a UNION gets involved, all of a sudden the company has to deal with a whole heap of federal regulations. Managers have to watch what they say, putting a chill on what were for- merly nice, casual, friendly relationships. “You might have worked with a manager for eight years, but now you guys can't talk the way you used to talk,” Cruz told workers. If there’s a union vote, New Seasons will have to give the union the names, phone numbers and email addresses of all employees, whether they want that information shared or not. [Scary!!] Members of this union organizing committee [New Seasons Workers United] can’t claim to represent workers, because they haven’t been elected. And the committee has very little sup- port. Only 176 current employees were on the union petition asking the CEO to meet , and some of them later told managers they didn’t know what they were signing. The union is here because it wants your dues: At $50 a month, that’s $1.8 million a year, $6 million every three years “out of your pocket.” And there’s no guarantee of what those dues will buy. The union can’t guarantee that they will increase your wages. If a union gets in, you might have to go on strike! [Scary!!] And if you’re a union member and there’s a strike and you don’t go on strike, the union can fine you. When the union came into stores with fliers and balloons, it was awkward and made cus- tomers feel like they were in the middle of it. Union campaigns can have a cleansing effect on a company, serving as a “wake-up call.” [Im- plication: Your New Seasons managers didn’t know some employees were unhappy. Now that the union reared its head, they’ll surely make changes to improve things … so you don’t need the union.] relations should a union be voted in. [See “What New Seasons’ union-busters said” below.] The meetings were quite ex- tensive. Lupe, in one of the recordings, says he personally trained then-CEO Wendy Collie and most of the company’s de- partment managers. Subsequent trainings were held for floor- level supervisors. Then meetings for frontline employees began. About three employee meetings a day for three days at each New Seasons store in the Portland metro area. Presumably, inoculating em- ployees against the union virus was an expensive proposition. The consultants were from Cali- fornia, so besides their hourly rate, New Seasons also presum- ably paid their travel and lodging expenses. [So much for the com- pany’s vaunted commitment to local business.] With one or two consultants at a time meeting about 10 employees at a time, getting through 3,300 rank-and- file workers would have meant as many as 200 to 300 hour-long meetings, with New Seasons paying the consultants hourly rate —plus roughly $50,000 in hourly wages for their own em- ployees, who were paid to attend the meetings. The exact amount of the con- sultant payments, it now seems, won’t be disclosed until April 2019. Did New Seasons work out a deal to pay the consultants nothing for two months in order to delay disclosure? A spokes- person for New Seasons de- clined to answer that question. But the experience left Byrd wondering: “If you don’t have anything to hide, why are you trying to bury this for a year?”
