Six months ago, grocery staff at a North Center Trader Joe’s filed for a union election. The move came amid a swell of union organizing that swept the service industry over the last several years, hitting big names such as Starbucks and Apple and REI. At Trader Joe’s, grocery staff said they saw a union as a way to secure better pay, benefits and a bigger say in their workplace.
When the Chicago workers voted in a union election in April, National Labor Relations Board officials counted 70 votes for the union and 70 votes against the union.
One ballot, which belonged to a pin-wearing union supporter, wasn’t counted.
For months, Trader Joe’s and the union fought over whether the ballot, which belongs to 25-year-old Brandi Hewitt, was valid. Last month, a labor board official recommended Hewitt’s ballot be opened and counted. This week, Trader Joe’s appealed that decision, which will now wind its way through additional layers of legal review. The status of the union remains in limbo.
The Chicago workers organized with Trader Joe’s Workers United, an independent, worker-led union that had its roots at a Trader Joe’s in Hadley, Massachusetts. At the time of their union filing, Trader Joe’s Workers United represented workers at just four stores, a tiny fraction of the company’s approximately 545.
Trader Joe’s, meanwhile, faced a host of allegations of labor law violations from the union and the National Labor Relations Board. The company has settled some allegations while others remain under investigation. Some workers said they felt the company’s stance on unions conflicted with its cheerful public image. Trader Joe’s staff are known for being warm and outgoing, complimenting customers on their snack selections or even outfits. That vibe can be authentic, one worker said, “if we’re all being taken care of.”
At the time of the vote, Hewitt had just moved to Chicago from the East Coast, where she’d worked since 2021 at a Trader Joe’s in Rockville, Maryland. When she moved to Chicago, she arranged a job at the North Center store and started working there in March, weeks before the union election. When she learned about the union campaign at the store, she was supportive and started wearing a union pin to work.
“I’ve been with the company for three years now,” Hewitt said, “and I think there are a lot of things that I would like to see changed.”
But on election day, Hewitt’s name wasn’t on the list of eligible voters provided by Trader Joe’s. She said she was instructed to cast a vote anyway, and her ballot was separated from the others.
“It was just said that it wouldn’t really matter unless there was a tie,” Hewitt said. “And then there was a tie.”
In union elections, ties are losses for the union. Hewitt’s ballot, therefore, would determine the results of the election. Trader Joe’s argues that Hewitt was only a temporary staffer on loan from her Maryland store and therefore ineligible to vote. The union maintains that her move to the Chicago store was always intended to be a permanent transfer.
The case went to hearing at the National Labor Relations Board offices in downtown Chicago this summer, where the company and the union called witnesses and made their case to labor board officials. In addition to challenging Hewitt’s ballot, the company alleged Trader Joe’s United had tainted the election by, among other things, intentionally spreading misinformation about the logistics of the vote, threatening and harassing employees and allowing a union sticker to be visible on an observer’s water bottle during the election.
The union filed one election objection of its own.
Last month, the NLRB’s representative in the case issued a report that said Hewitt was an eligible voter and that her ballot should be opened. “I do not find Crew Member Hewitt’s transfer to the Chicago Store to be temporary in nature,” she wrote.
The official recommended all of Trader Joe’s other objections to the election as well as the union’s single objection be dismissed.
The saga, however, is far from over. Trader Joe’s has appealed the hearing officer’s report, maintaining in court filings that it believes Hewitt to be ineligible to vote and arguing that its other objections to the election should still stand. The case will now wind its way through additional levels of review at the NLRB, leaving the status of the union in limbo. Alec Plant, a union organizer at the store, said the union fully expects Hewitt’s vote to eventually be counted but expects it to take about a year.
Nakia Rohde, a spokesperson for Trader Joe’s, declined to comment on pending litigation. The company has said previously it supports workers’ “right to choose” whether or not to unionize.
Hewitt said the process of litigating her ballot through the labor board taught her that “these corporate entities really have all the money and power.”
“Why not?” she said. “Why wouldn’t they drag it on as long as possible, if they have the means to do so?”
Seth Goldstein, an attorney for the union, accused the company of participating in what he described as “Trump tactics” to deny Hewitt’s right to vote.
“This is part of Trader Joe’s, Morgan Lewis’ and the billionaires’ tactics and schemes to delay bargaining,” he said, referring to Trader Joe’s outside counsel, which also represents Elon Musk’s SpaceX in lawsuits seeking to declare the NLRB unconstitutional in federal court in Texas.
Earlier this year, at a hearing over alleged unfair labor practices, Trader Joe’s echoed arguments made by SpaceX and a litany of other companies by suggesting the structure of the labor board and its administrative law judges was unconstitutional, though the company has said it has no plans to join a lawsuit like SpaceX’s.
Labor lawyers and experts, including Goldstein, have raised alarms that a possible second term for former President Donald Trump could lead to a major rollback in labor rights for U.S. workers in part because of pending constitutional challenges to the labor board.
“It’s all related,” Goldstein said.
The vote in Chicago hinges largely around the contents of Hewitt’s ballot because the election was so close.
It wasn’t the first thin margin for Trader Joe’s United: In 2023, employees at a store in Manhattan voted 76-76, a loss for the union.
Typically, union organizers file for elections when they believe they have more than enough support to win — not just enough, said Bob Bruno, director of the labor studies program at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Razor-thin margins, he said, suggests that union organizers may have overestimated the strength of their support.
“You would expect that this body, this labor organization, would be reassessing how they’re reaching out to workers, how they’re interpreting what workers are saying,” Bruno said.
Workers said the campaign in Chicago had been divisive and marked by interpersonal disputes.
Plant said pro-union workers began their organizing in secret, which is typical for a union campaign, because they feared reprisal from the company. But some store veterans felt left out of the process, Plant acknowledged. “They treated that as a personal betrayal,” he said, “and they took that very, very, very hard.”
Other union opponents, Plant said, felt “like they just don’t need a union because Trader Joe’s treats them so well.”
José Alvarado, a longtime employee who voted against the union, said he hadn’t been notified of the campaign until after pro-union workers went public when he showed up to work the next day. Alvarado also didn’t trust union leadership personally, he said.
He described Trader Joe’s as “one of the greatest companies that anybody could work for,” but said that didn’t mean he didn’t think there were things the grocer couldn’t do better. If the union campaign had been led by other people, he said, he would’ve “love(d) to be part of the conversation.”
As of last month, the NLRB had certified bargaining units at four union Trader Joe’s stores. The company is facing a litany of unfair labor practice allegations from the union and from labor board officials. Last month, labor board officials dismissed a petition by a worker seeking to decertify the union at the first union store in Massachusetts because of a pending complaint against the company there. The worker, represented by an attorney with the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, has appealed.
“It’s just this persistent desire to crush us in any way possible,” said Sarah Beth Ryther, the union’s vice president.
In September, labor board officials issued a complaint against the company alleging it had violated labor law in the run-up to the tied New York election and therefore undermined its validity.
The complaint seeks an order that would require the company to recognize and start bargaining with the union, according to the NLRB.
If the case isn’t settled, it’ll go to a hearing next January.
Trader Joe’s declined to comment on pending litigation.
