New Frontiers in Whole Foods Unionbusting
By 
Whole Foods has always been one of the most anti-union companies in the country, ever since its founding. It is now in the Bezos orbit. That hasn’t helped. It is now using the fact of Trump’s likely illegal firing of a Democratic appointee on the National Labor Relations Board to argue that a union election in a Philadelphia store should be thrown out.
Amazon-owned Whole Foods asked regulators to dismiss the results of a union election at a Philadelphia store, citing President Donald Trump’s firing of two leaders at a federal labor regulator.
Whole Foods’ objections in a Monday filing show the company attempting to exploit some of the disruption Trump has caused inside federal agencies in the first weeks of his new term. The tactic could delay efforts by the United Food and Commercial Workers union to organize workers inside the e-commerce behemoth.
Trump last week fired two leaders at the National Labor Relations Board, the agency that adjudicates disputes over labor organizing. That left the nation’s top labor regulator with only two members, rendering it unable to do business due to a lack of quorum.
Whole Foods’ objection to the election filed with the NLRB also accused the union — which won the Philadelphia vote 130-100 — of intimidating and coercing workers.
Intimidation, such as the workers volunteering to sign cards and vote yes. Ah.
The regional NLRB official who willinvestigate the company’s objection could dismiss those concerns and certify the union win. But should Whole Foods disregard that decision,the agency could not enforce it until a replacement board member is nominated and confirmed.
Sharon Block, a Harvard law professor and former Democratic member of the labor board, said that could take months.
The Whole Foods filing made clear the company is “not going to abide by the outcome of the election,” Block said. “And now there’s nothing that can compel them to.”
The actions by Whole Foods are utterly transparent. But why shouldn’t they be. They just don’t care and they know that Trump and the right-wing courts will back them up, as the Supreme Court moves toward overturning major parts if not all of the National Labor Relations Act over the next couple of years. Going to be awful hard for any union to succeed going forward and union elections may soon be a thing of the past. That doesn’t mean that unions can’t operate. It means it’s going to look very different. And much harder for workers to see better lives ahead of them.