Sign the petition: I support Trader Joe’s employees!
Trader Joe's CEO Dan Bane
At Trader Joe's, workers have been speaking out since the start of COVID-19 about how the company has failed to do enough to protect staff. These misjudgments include failure to enforce proper social distancing protocols, and on one occasion, a company representative told staff they were being dramatic for raising this concern. At the start of the pandemic, Trader Joe's managers told employees they were not allowed to wear masks or gloves as it would “alarm the customers.” And in February of 2021, a Twitter user went viral after being fired by the company for writing a letter to the CEO Mark Bane urging him to increase COVID-19 protections for store employees.
These injustices are just the tip of the iceberg for Trader Joe’s.
Since then, employees have reported cuts to pay, sick leave, benefits, and have seen their retirement plan become almost inaccessible to most. A 14-year veteran of Trader Joe's sat down with More Perfect Union to share his experience working at Trader Joe's with cancer. The company’s response? To remove him from his health care plan.
And it doesn’t stop there. In 2020, CEO Dan Bane sent a company-wide letter to Trader Joe's staff in an attempt to squash whispers of unionizing. Bane noted a personal commitment to holding a union vote if at least 30% of crew members at any store requested one. An employee has noted that this statement misled crew members that didn’t know that this was already the law. “It’s not up to Dan if we vote, it’s up to us if we vote,” this employee tells More Perfect Union.
And when employees at a Trader Joe's in Hadley, Massachusetts won their union vote, establishing the company's first-ever union, that wasn't up to Dan either.
This is a pivotal moment for the labor movement, and Trader Joe's employees. As we’ve seen previously with other unionizing efforts, company executives have been scaling their capacity and intent to prevent workers from building power through unions. If leadership at Trader Joe's is anything like leadership at other major brands like Starbucks, Amazon, etc, this marks just the beginning of an aggressive anti-union campaign against other stores attempting to follow the Hadley stores' lead.
We cannot fail Trader Joe's employees, not when they need us the most.
Sign the petition: I support Trader Joe’s employees!
Sponsored by
To:
Trader Joe's CEO Dan Bane
From:
[Your Name]
We rely on Trader Joe’s employees to help feed our families. They are essential to our communities and must be treated as such. I am calling on you to:
- Immediately halt and retract any attempts to spread misleading and false information about unions and squall any attempts to obstruct the unionizing process at any Trader Joe’s location.
- Recognize the Trader Joe’s United movement, allow for fair elections at stores driving unionizing efforts, and work with said unions to provide a fair contract for staff.
- Adhere to employees at Trader Joe's locations across the country calling for stronger protections against COVID-19 transmission.