Fresh off the holiday season, the retail sector can’t catch a break in this roundup full of labor updates.
King Soopers’ President Joe Kelley believes a strike is likely at the grocer’s Denver-area grocery stores, where workers will vote this week on whether to walk out in five cities, including Denver, Colorado Springs, and Boulder. UFCW rejected the company’s “last, best and final offer,” including $4.50 per hour raises ahead of the Feb. 15 contract expiration date.
Costco is staring down the possibility of a Teamsters strike if the union’s national master agreement expires on Jan. 31 without a new deal. A month ago, union president Sean O’Brien claimed that Costco refused acceptance of 98% of Teamsters’ proposals. Still, O’Brien is once again exaggerating the impact of his union striking against a company. The Teamsters represent 18,000 Costco workers out of the wholesale club operator’s 300,000 total workers. A “national” strike would mainly be felt in California, where 40 of the 56 unionized Costco stores are located.
Whole Foods workers in Philadelphia voted this week to unionize, which is a first at the Amazon-owned grocery chain. In doing so, the workers joined UFCW, with 130 workers in favor and 100 workers against the decision.
REI CEO Eric Artz announced his retirement and the co-op named Mary Beth Laughton as replacement president and CEO. She will take the helm on Mar. 31, and her career history includes years as a Nike executive, a CEO stint at Gap brand Athleta, and a leadership role at Sephora. Laughton’s experience suggests that she has felt the effects of unions at Sephora, and both Nike and Gap have unionized suppliers and factories. For what it’s worth, REI Union declared that they are looking forward to working with Laughton, although it remains to be seen how her arrival could impact ongoing union activity at the co-op, where 10 REI retail locations are unionized with the UFCW-affiliated REI Union.
Meanwhile, REI Ski Shop workers in NYC are nearing the two-month mark for a strike that began on December 4.
Retailers are reacting to Trump’s dismantling of DEI programs in the federal government, a move that is reverberating through the private sector. As such, several companies have announced or reaffirmed their stances over the past week. Those employers who have declined to scale back their DEI policies include Apple, Microsoft, and Costco, the latter of which announced that their board overwhelmingly voted to retain DEI efforts following a think tank’s proxy proposal to disband the program. Whereas retailers who have chosen to do away with DEI include Walmart and Target.
As we have discussed, Trump’s DEI-focused executive order empowers the Justice Department to work with agency heads to scrutinize private sector companies for “potential civil compliance investigations” of their DEI hiring or training practices if they are deemed to run counter to Trump’s new guidelines. Legal challenges could arise with the long-term effects of this sweeping executive order to be determined.
