Elliot Goble said in February that voting to join the local Teamsters union was one of his and his fellow WinCo Foods employees’ “greatest achievements.”
But more than six months later, Goble now says he and other employees at the South Salt Lake store are no closer to a bargaining agreement. Management at the South Salt Lake grocery store is challenging the election’s fairness and has filed two appeals to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), asking the board to grant a hearing so that it might make its case.
The NLRB certified the election in April, according to case filings, and has dismissed both of the store’s appeals. In its second dismissal on June 21, the national board stated briefly that WinCo management’s appeal “raises no substantial issues warranting review.”
WinCo hasn’t given up. A notice to employees posted in the employee break room in July and shared with The Salt Lake Tribune says management believes “both decisions are incorrect for several reasons and will continue to challenge to obtain a simple hearing on our objections.”
Until that hearing, the notice says, management will not show up at the bargaining table. “In the meantime, please continue to provide our customers with low prices, fresh product, clean conditions, friendly service, and fast checkout,” the note concludes.
WinCo is within its legal rights to appeal the election, noted Lauren Scholnick, a labor attorney and adjunct professor at the University of Utah’s law school.
And a corporate spokesperson said Winco is pursuing its appeals because it believes “that our employees were denied the right to participate in a secret ballot election without interference from Teamsters. For this reason, we will continue to pursue all legal avenues available to WinCo to ensure a hearing over the Teamsters’ interference with this fundamental employee right.”
But Goble said it is his opinion that the company is using the appeals as a stall tactic to thin union support among employees. It’s generally true, Scholnick said, that every appeal and subsequent delay can “really zap employees’ enthusiasm for the union” — and employers know that.
“Once they file that appeal, they know they’re buying themselves a lot of time,” Scholnick said.
Labor scholars in other states have flagged similar appeals at companies like Amazon and Starbucks as a strategy to delay the organizing process.
Election questioned, appealed twice
In its first appeal to the NLRB, WinCo alleged employees and union organizers coerced people into voting. Union supporters had “destroyed the laboratory environment for a free and fair election,” the appeal claimed, by lingering in or near the polling place on election day and offering food as an incentive to vote.
Local Teamster organizer Josh Ikola, WinCo claimed, had also “trespassed ... at least half a dozen times” in the days leading up to the election, to “solicit employees who were on the clock.”
Ikola said he was, indeed, at the WinCo store a few times as a customer and did speak to employees. But, he said, he was never confronted or asked to leave.
Before the election happened, WinCo had tried to object to some employees’ eligibility to vote. But an updated NLRB rule, amended in 2023, stipulated that managers cannot litigate issues of “eligibility and inclusion” until the election is over.
According to the NLRB case file, store managers and assistant managers were not eligible to vote, but managers in training were. WinCo would have challenged their eligibility, the company claimed, but instead was “pressured to agree to a situation” in which employees could vote who may not actually be eligible.
Matthew Lomax, NLRB’s Denver regional director, denied WinCo’s first appeal and hearing request, according to case records. It is not interference or coercion to offer food to voters, he wrote in his decision. And Lomax was not convinced WinCo’s evidence in support of the other charges was “enough ... to support its other objections in a hearing,” he wrote.
The local Teamsters union has filed three Unfair Labor Practice claims against WinCo with the NLRB.
According to the charging document, the claims allege Winco refuses to bargain; another says the store changed its policy to prohibit employees wearing buttons at work after they started wearing buttons in support of a union; and the third argues WinCo has been “diluting” the eligible union pool by firing employees who could vote or cutting hours “in an effort to make them quit.”
Ikola said he hopes the claims lead the NLRB to issue a bargaining order. “They’re just stalling, and they’re going against the workers,” he said. “It’s really unfortunate.”
In the statement to The Tribune, WinCo said it respects “the right of employees to engage in protected activities” and it “takes seriously its legal obligations and has not retaliated or discriminated against any of its employees.”
(Chris Samuels | The Salt Lake Tribune) Chazio Rizzo, Elliot Goble and Matty Jackson helped organize WinCo’s union election in February. Seven months later, Rizzo (left) is gone and WinCo is refusing to bargain, employees say.
A new playbook
Fewer than half of the 109 WinCo employees who were eligible to vote in February still work at the store, according to Goble and colleague Matt “Matty” Jackson. Some have been fired, while others left on their own terms, they said.
High turnover isn’t new; it was one of the concerns employees had hoped to address at the bargaining table, Jackson said. The turnover is what stops most employees from participating in the employer ownership model, Jackson said, which requires at least two years of employment to become partially vested and six years to gain full access to stock funds.
New eligible employees are able to sign up for the union.
Goble said he thinks recent turnover, even if it has not specifically targeted union supporters, is part of an emerging anti-union playbook: appeal, delay, reduce the number of union supporters. It’s what Amazon is doing in Staten Island, Goble said, where workers still don’t have a contract two years after voting to unionize, while some prominent union organizers have been fired.
“This is just one little thread in a big tapestry of the labor struggle,” Goble said.
WinCo’s next course of action is to take its case to court, said Scholnick, the labor attorney and U. professor. That, too, will take time. “It’s a miserably long process,” she said.
And if or once bargaining begins, it’s not unusual for negotiations between employers and unionized employees to take time; the Economic Policy Institute and the Department of Labor both say it often takes more than a year after union recognition to reach a first contract.
Employers can “drag out a negotiation” in order to “stonewall” a contract, Scholnick said. Eventually, unionized employees — who pay dues to the union in exchange for the union’s bargaining power — may grow weary and disillusioned. Scholnick said she has seen employees petition to decertify their union after years of negotiating to no avail. It’s all a way to “weaken the union,” Scholnick said.
Unions have been accused, much less often, of using unfair tactics during negotiations or unfair labor practices. Examples of how a union can fail to bargain in good faith include insisting to an impasse on a point that is not a mandatory subject of bargaining, according to the National Labor Relations Board. Unions also must represent both member and nonmember employees fairly, the NLRB says.
No matter the outcome, Scholnick said, there is value for employees in the organizing process “in and of itself. This is really grassroots politicking. Even if you lose, the idea that you all came together and talked about your workplace helps employees feel like they do have a voice.”
Goble and Jackson said they will continue to fight for a new contract and a seat at the bargaining table. The store is preparing for a “collective labor action,” Goble said on Monday, though he would not specify what kind, and added that the momentum feels stronger than it did even two months ago.
“We’re prepared to fight for recognition,” Goble said. “If we don’t do it, some other group of people is going to have to deal with the same things. We have a responsibility to anyone who walks in these doors.”
Shannon Sollitt is a Report for America corps member covering business accountability and sustainability for The Salt Lake Tribune. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by clicking here.
