PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

Co-op or Co-optation?The IWW drive at East End
by Worker Freedom Friday, Jul. 07, 2006 at 7:48 AM

By Charlie Deitch - Pittsburgh City Paper, July 6, 2006

direct_actioncatsm.jpg, image/jpeg, 230x228

For the third time since 1993, workers at the 50-employee East End Food Co-op are mounting a drive to join the Industrial Workers of the World union. This time around, they’ve received a less-negative reaction from management — only to see their efforts stymied in a novel way.

“Management has been much more favorable to the idea of a union than management in the past had been,” Co-op staffer Stacey Clampitt told City Paper while the drive was building. But on June 28, a Co-op management employee resigned to become a wage-earning worker … and began circulating fliers for a different union — one that does not seem to exist.

Located in Point Breeze, the 30-year-old Co-op is owned by dues-paying members, who count on it for natural foods and its vegetarian café. But in the past, the organization’s board has resisted union organizing, especially in the face of competition from the Whole Foods outlet in East Liberty.

In a statement on June 22, Clampitt and another member of the East End Food Co-op Workers Committee, Evan W. Wolfson, said the current union drive was intended “to improve working conditions, pay and benefits, and to address long-standing issues of low staff morale and high turnover.”

On June 27, Workers Committee members met with the Co-op board to determine whether the Co-op would voluntarily recognize the new union if a majority of staffers signed registration cards. The Co-op could also opt for a lengthier ratification process involving the National Labor Relations Board, but instead it put the decision in the hands of Co-op General Manager Rob Baran. Baran says he’s wary of going through a drawn-out NLRB-supervised process too, and would like to resolve the issue by late July. He and the Workers Committee have already discussed possible approaches to conducting an election.

But Baran acknowledges that a management employee “resigned from the management team a day after the board meeting” — and then began circulating fliers for another union. He did not identify the employee, but on June 28 Co-op workers began receiving fliers in their employee mailboxes, urging them to accept the United Co-operative Workers union instead of the IWW.

The flier — a one-page document that mostly speaks against previous unionizing efforts at the Co-op — lists the e-mail address of Supplement Buyer Dan Denlinger as a contact. Denlinger could not be reached for comment by press time.

“The flier was obviously homemade,” says Clampitt, who is an occasional freelance photographer for City Paper. “I have never heard of that [UCW].”

A Google search for the union turns up empty.

“I’ve never before heard of the United Co-operative Workers” either, says Kevin Farcus, a national IWW organizer. “My guess is, it’s made up.” The flier, Farcus points out, “doesn’t advertise any affiliation with a larger [union] body.”

The flier also contains an anonymous employee complaint about monthly $18 IWW dues — they are actually $6, says Clampitt — while promoting United Co-operative Workers membership for a single penny each month.

“From our perspective, this is absolutely a union-busting technique,” Farcus says. “I’ve seen it before, where management sends in a sympathetic employee with a wink and a nod to start another union. It’s an end-run around the National Labor Relations Act, and a lot of people are pretty wise to it. You have to consider the timeline of this. It just appeared overnight, and that’s kind of suspicious.”

Baran says he understands the suspicion, but says management had absolutely nothing to do with the fliers. He says the current management team, which is completely different than the team that fought off the 2003 union drive, has no intention of engaging in union-busting.

The second union drive, he says, “has unfortunately caused a messy situation and has clouded the water a bit.” But he maintains, “We have to follow the law and treat both union drives the same.

“This is completely the staff’s decision, it’s their choice and not for us to have a say in.”

The Workers Committee will be meeting again, Farcus says, and all sides will sit down soon to discuss the way forward. Clampitt says Baran has assured her that management was not involved in the second union’s sudden appearance.

Still, she says, “Regardless of who is behind this, it’s going to seriously delay the process. I’m not as optimistic as I was before.”

Union buster/ slumlord
by yinsurgent Friday, Jul. 07, 2006 at 9:42 AM

Dan Denlinger hatred of working people isn't limited to the so called "co-op" (which is a co-op in the same way that Burger King is where royals dine or Bill Peduto and Hillary Clinton are "liberal" politicians). Denlinger is also something of a slumlord, in fact, one of the 'union abatement' specialist, managers the 'co-op' brought in a few years ago was housed in one of his units. Needless to say, that didn't last very long either.
It comes as little surprise that he'd invent an imaginary union.
Make it worker-owned and operated, or it's just another whole foods, or bougie new giant iggle.

Direct Action Can Sell the Goods, Too
by C. Friday, Jul. 07, 2006 at 1:54 PM
maxfarrand@hotmail.com

When is the line drawn? Is it not enough that the co-op is a member driven, stable community force that is a nice alternative to Giant Iggle and Whole Foods? I can't speak for wages or workers or any of that, but inflating the co-op as if it is your neighborhood Walmart seems to be a little disingenuous.

And while I'm not on the subject, "Make it worker-owned and operated, or it's just another whole foods, or bougie new giant iggle." ? Why is it that it has to be made worker-owned to gain any fleeting respect from the activist community?

Besides, if a worker owned grocery store is what yinsurgent would like to see, why not gather your friends and start one? You could even start posting on imc as yinsmanagement! But why take away what dues-paying folks have put together. Take heart from Steel Valley Printers, a worker owned union print shop: they "became the change they wanted to see in the world" as the bumper sticker goes.

Just a few thoughts.

Liberals Love Big Business as Usual
by yinsurgent Friday, Jul. 07, 2006 at 4:01 PM

Many chain drug stores also sell discount cards, making the consumer a "member".
Shareholders are "members" of any corporation. They even possess the liberal holy grail of sufferage.
If by "alternative", you mean located on a side street, kinda grubby and with a bulletin board where people can sell their couch, the yes the co-op is an alternative to the chains. Otherwise it's pretty much the same.

A stable community force would respect it's workers, instead of exploiting them and viciously opposing their right to organize.

c.'s posts on this site remind me of a cartoon I once saw in a magazine. In the background was an Aztec priest about to plunge a knife into the heart of a sacrifcial victim, while two men are speaking in the foreground and one says: "It may not be perfect but it's the best system anybody's come up with."

Call me what you want, just never call me late for dinner.
by C. Friday, Jul. 07, 2006 at 4:43 PM
maxfarrand@hotmail.com

Yinzmanagement:
In the hopes of changing some debate structure here, ya got a point, at least on the surface.

But you and I know that Eckerd is not the co-op any more than Walmart is the tmc. If they were the same, under the guidelines you suggest, we should compare the TMC to Walmart, because both have 'dues' paying members! AAHH! The TMC is the evil we loath! To the Pick-it lines! By extrapolation, all unions, the IWW, every self regulating body that charges dues are the same as Whole Foods, Walmart et al. Which brings us back to: they're not the same and you know it.

Now, I don't know about how viciously the co-op has opposed their right to organize. Have there been beatings? Thugs with baseball bats roaming the perimeter of that 'grubby' building waiting to bust the head of the first person with an IWW shirt? If that is the case, you are right, those are some vicious assholes. But I don't know all the facts, and am really just remarking on what is in front of me. Are they laying down and accepting the union? No? Well, really, did you expect them to?

Now I knew this would inevitably come up. I am on a left wing website, disagreeing with a radical, so that automatically makes me a liberal. This is where I vehemently oppose my percieved liberalness etc. etc. call you names ad nauseum, but you know what? I don't care what you label me. But I digress....

I am interested in your response, yinsurgent. When can we expect the worker owned grocery store? I will contribute toward your startup costs and we can have some fundraisers and make this thing a reality. Anyone else out there in internetland agree?

PS--While you begin the first draft of the worker owned grocery store business plan, what exactly is the liberal holy grail of sufferage? It's just kinda floating there, I had to ask.

Mmm...Dinner
by yinsmanagement Friday, Jul. 07, 2006 at 5:30 PM

Sure, the TMC sells some trinkets, but the "co-op" has more in common with Eckerd than the TMC does with Mao-Mart.

Why resort to something as honest and tangible as baseball bats when you have your "co-op" member's dues, to hire management consultants and lawyers to prevent workers from organizing? Besides, workers have more baseball bats and such than the tax id number and board of directors which make up a corporation, and could concievably defend themselves. Workers can't win the lawyer way.

We'll see worker owned when we take back what's already ours. As far as startup costs go, buy a rifle for a panhandler. That's a start.

P.S. The holy grail of sufferage remark refers to the love of lesser-evilism and so-called 'representative democracy' which is neither. Shareholders are voting members of a corporation, like the co-op

What's For Dinner?
by C. Monday, Jul. 10, 2006 at 7:20 PM
maxfarrand@hotmail.com

I see you've taken to your new moniker, its interesting to see you grow into your new role.

As far as giving rifles to panhandlers, that won't get us a worker owned grocery store...it'll get us a panhandler with a rifle.

A word about lawyer: did you really expect them to lay down and fully comply with any sort of organizing drive? C'mon, a few months in the trenches and you should no that no good deed goes unpunished. Fight the union is still not vicious...the Boston Massacre was vicious, the El Mozote Massacre was vicious...lawyers and the legal process is just difficult and annoying.

We'll see worker owned when you sweat and strive to put something together that's yours, and you can operate it with a clean heart, not something that you took away. Anyway after we put the EEFC out of business, we can just lease their building and move into it...

The worker who has worked at a grocery store owns it no more than I own the Kohl's that I helped build in washington, or the homes that me and others helped build in bridgeville. I suppose if you laid the block on one of these monsters, then moved your stuff into the lingerie isle, you would be suprised when you were removed by force? I expect no ownership in anything except that which is mine, as I decided when I went to work on an agreed upon wage (brickwork) for an agreed upon price, which I was not unhappy about.

I'm just askin' for some reason here.

Now, you see you made me ramble again.....

Not some vegan BS
by C. for Calvinist? Tuesday, Jul. 11, 2006 at 4:51 PM

While amusing, I can't figure out if the disconnect is Stockholm Syndrome or massa's best friend, the Protestant work ethic.