Despite the company’s cheerful slogans of “team” and “love,” my time at Whole Foods revealed a starkly different reality. Here’s an inside look at what a Whole Foods Workday truly entails, and why I ultimately had to walk away from this seemingly idyllic workplace.
Last month, the façade began to crack publicly when Whole Foods Market employees in San Francisco, after years of discreet organizing, stepped into the light. Building solidarity outside of work hours and supporting each other through management issues, these team members decided to disrupt the typical Whole Foods workday. They presented store management with a petition, signed by over 50 workers, demanding a $5 hourly wage increase, alongside improved paid time off, health benefits, retirement plans, and consistent schedules.
My own Whole Foods workday experience dates back to the spring of 2012. As is common when starting a new job, I bonded with a close-knit group of colleagues over drinks after work. Our conversations quickly moved beyond casual introductions to deeper topics like politics, coinciding with the waning momentum of the Occupy Movement. We shared stories of political engagement and debated how to channel the energy of Occupy into new avenues. Naturally, I inquired about unionization efforts at Whole Foods. Some coworkers exchanged knowing glances, while others feigned ignorance. Just a week later, I was brought into their confidence, discovering an organizing effort that had been quietly underway for over two years. While I was eager for immediate action, my colleagues understood the necessity of a long-term strategy.
In the nearly five years these workers had been organizing in the shadows, management’s response, after they finally went public, has reportedly been a campaign of “kill them with kindness,” while remaining silent on their specific demands. On the corporate level, shortly after the Whole Foods Union’s public emergence, Whole Foods Market announced a wage increase for its San Francisco stores, effective January 1st. This increase, raising the starting wage by $1.25 from $11.50 to $12.75, was just 50 cents above San Francisco’s minimum wage increase scheduled for May 2015. Beyond this, both store and corporate management have avoided publicly addressing the situation. Workers involved in the organizing believe this preemptive wage increase was a direct response to their collective action.
To further emphasize their demands, employees organized pickets at the Whole Foods Northern California Regional distribution center in Richmond, California. Although the picket didn’t fully halt the flow of goods to Bay Area stores as intended, mirroring the Black Friday retail worker actions of 2013, it did achieve some solidarity. The Teamsters union agreed their drivers would not cross the picket line. However, Ruan, the shipping company contracted by Whole Foods, resorted to hiring temporary workers – scabs – to bypass the picket.
Choosing to organize with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), a radical-syndicalist union, Whole Foods employees are consciously avoiding traditional unions that represent workers at major grocery chains like Safeway and Albertson’s. This decision means forgoing the substantial financial resources of unions like United Grocery Workers, but it grants them greater flexibility and discretion in their organizing efforts. Notably, the IWW is also the only union to have successfully established union shops within Starbucks.
“Organizing through the IWW gives us a lot of autonomy,” explained Nick Theodosis, an organizer and beer and wine specialist at Whole Foods SoMa. “All the decisions are made on the shop floor.”
It’s widely known that Whole Foods Market has an aversion to unions. Co-founder and co-CEO John Mackey has famously compared unions to herpes and asserted that his company is “beyond unions.” Whole Foods holds the position of the second-largest non-union retailer, only surpassed by Wal-Mart, a company that is overtly hostile to labor rights, without the progressive veneer.
Despite this anti-union stance, Whole Foods Market has consistently been featured on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For list for 17 consecutive years. In 2014, it ranked 44th, even outperforming Goldman Sachs. However, it’s important to note that Fortune’s metrics do not significantly weigh organized labor as a factor in its rankings.
On my very first Whole Foods workday, Mackey and co-CEO Walter Robb were present in the store, personally greeting employees. Mackey, to his credit, has restructured executive compensation, taking a symbolic $1 annual salary. However, these executive savings don’t appear to translate into improved wages for the workforce. He was approachable and quirky, and during a brief conversation about backpacking, he confided that he uses the trail name “Strider,” a revelation that seemed to embarrass Robb. The trail name is likely a reference to Aragorn’s alias in “Lord of the Rings.”
Drawing on my previous experience working on fishing boats, I joined the seafood team, earning a starting wage $2 above minimum wage. However, I was disheartened to discover that I was earning considerably more than my friend from Mexico who had helped me secure the job. He had been a dedicated Whole Foods employee for over five years and had only received minimal pay increases.
Within Whole Foods, departments are referred to as “teams” – such as grocery, seafood, and produce – and employees are “team members.” The terms “bosses” and “management” are avoided; instead, there are “team leaders.” If these terms reflected genuine collaboration, the traditional labor-management divide might indeed be less pronounced. The company’s employee handbook explicitly states, “Us versus them thinking has no place in our company.” To foster this ideal, Whole Foods claims to cultivate an atmosphere of “happiness, joy and love” and encourages “participation and involvement” in company policy.
During my Whole Foods workday tenure, the company actively sought “team member” input on restructuring its benefits package. All employees were required to attend a meeting about benefits. At this meeting, the in-store HR manager made it clear that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) had led to increased health costs that would need to be passed on to the workers – excuse me, team members. The subsequent vote – non-binding, naturally – was essentially a vote on how employees preferred their benefits to be reduced.
During this meeting, I checked Whole Foods’ stock performance on my phone and saw a consistent upward trend. The company’s stock price had surged over 30 percent in the preceding year and continued to climb – despite a stock dip earlier that year due to missed growth projections. I showed the stock chart to an organizer beside me, who chuckled, and then to others in the room, but there was little amusement to be found. They understood they were about to shoulder higher costs so Whole Foods could showcase cost savings to Wall Street.
This situation was, and remains, a clear indicator of the prevailing economic climate. Even at a high-performing company like Whole Foods, benefits are continually eroded, and wages stagnate while the cost of living steadily rises.
In fact, a public housing project situated just blocks from the SoMa store is commonly known as the “Whole Foods Hotel,” because a significant number of team members reside there. Even with full-time employment at one of Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For, employees often depend on public housing and other forms of public assistance, shifting the financial burden to the public sector.
My own Whole Foods workday experience was brief. After three months of being classified as a part-time team member while consistently working full-time hours, and struggling with a schedule that made seeing my daughter regularly incredibly difficult, I resigned. As is often the case, I didn’t harbor any resentment towards store management; I never felt mistreated or intimidated. However, I experienced a very common plight in the American workforce: working 40 hours a week and still being chronically broke.
Many of the employees now risking their livelihoods by standing up and making demands are long-term Whole Foods employees. They are supporting children and raising families on what are essentially unlivable wages in expensive cities. While the retail industry is known for high turnover – my own case being an example – for many, it represents their primary source of income. For a company that champions participation and involvement, it should respect and encourage the most direct form of participation a “team member” can undertake: organizing and demanding fair treatment from their highly profitable employer.
By Nick Rahaim
Nick Rahaim is a commercial fisherman who has committed numerous acts of journalism in various mainstream and alternative media outlets. Check out his blog at outside-in.org and follow him @nrahaim on Twitter and Instagram.
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