Workers at two New Seasons locations file to join union

Published 4:30 pm Wednesday, November 8, 2023

Workers at two New Seasons locations have filed to join the union that represents workers at eight other Portland-area New Seasons stores.

Employees of the Sellwood location on Southeast Tacoma Street and the Boise location on Northeast Williams Avenue submitted their petitions to the National Labor Relations Board this week.

The Sellwood location has 86 non-management employees, according to the NLRB filing. 

A group of workers at the Sellwood location tried to unionize in September 2022, but the vote failed 29-33.

“Organizers in the store say positive union sentiment at the store has grown since then, as NSLU has more firmly established itself,” a press release from NSLU stated.

The New Seasons Labor Union formed in May 2022 with the unionization campaign of the Seven Corners location on Southeast Division Street. The Seven Corners location won its union vote last September, followed by the Slabtown location in October.

By the end of 2022, Woodstock, Grant Park and Concordia had joined the union.

Cedar Hills, Arbor Lodge and Hawthorne joined in the first half of 2023.

The union now represents roughly 900 workers at 8 Portland-area locations. Contract negotiations are still ongoing.

The University Park location on Lombard Street in North Portland also filed to unionize earlier this year. An election is scheduled for late November.

“Conversations around union representation have taken on a different tone since last year,” Jimbo Heiner, a sous chef at the Sellwood store, said in a press release from the union. “We can point to clear and specific wins from ongoing bargaining that show what we can achieve when we stand together.”

New Seasons workers “cite an unforgiving and difficult to navigate attendance policy as a top reason for organizing, as well as low pay and inconsistent task-based scheduling,” NSLU said.

The attendance policy was cited in the current campaigns as well as the 2022 efforts. The union said it is “currently in the process of negotiating an improved attendance policy with the company for union-represented stores.”

The upscale grocery chain sold to a South Korean company in 2019, 20 years after it was founded in Portland.

The 2022 Sellwood union effort was NSLU’s first failed vote. A union vote at the Hillsboro New Seasons location also failed in 2022, but that effort was led by the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 555, which represents more than 30,000 workers in Oregon, southwest Washington, Idaho, and Wyoming.

“After two and a half years of work and a promotion, I still don’t make enough money to buy the groceries that I stock,” Ethan Harrison, an online shopping lead at the Williams location, said in a press release from the union. “If New Seasons Market won’t fight for me to have dignified wages, then I’m gonna join a Union that can!”