Trader Joe’s workers and union supporters rallied outside the company’s Boston headquarters Tuesday, accusing the grocery chain of retaliation against the union and demanding the reinstatement of a longtime employee they say was fired illegally.
Steven Andrade was terminated last June after 18 years at the Trader Joe’s in Hadley — the first location in the United States to unionize back in June 2022. In an incident report obtained by GBH News, store management cited “a continued pattern of [Andrade] not taking direction,” culminating in “a disregard for the company’s safety practices” by failing to take home a power tool he had been using to make signs for the store.
Andrade has disputed this narrative in a complaint filed with the National Labor Relations Board.
“It was retaliatory,” Andrade said. “I feel like my union support and my willingness to try to effect positive change in the store was seen as somehow a negative rather than a positive.”
Andrade sees his termination as punishment for his vocal support of the union, which is still in ongoing contract negotiations with the company. The firing is one of many issues that have emerged in response to last year’s union victory, Andrade says, with four stores across the country now fighting for contracts.
Trader Joe’s did not respond to requests for comment.
Though the Hadley’s store’s union, called Trader Joe’s United, is independent and not affiliated with a larger union, dozens of organizers from union chapters around the state joined the rally Tuesday. Marching outside the doors of the Trader Joe’s office on Federal Street, protesters chanted “Trader Joe’s, you can’t hide, we can see your greedy side,” and held signs reading “stop union busting” and “reinstate Steve.”
“This company cannot function without us,” union organizer Maeg Yosef shouted to the crowd through a megaphone. “Trader Joe's is nothing without its workers.”
As the crowd chanted and marched outside, Yosef and Trader Joe’s United president Jamie Edwards were escorted upstairs to deliver a petition to regional vice president Tracy Anderson. The petition, which has garnered more than 22,000 signatures since Andrade’s termination in June, cites a “shift” in company culture within the past few years, resulting in “increasing turnover, declining benefits, and stagnating wages.”
In July, the National Labor Relations Board sided with the union, finding merit in a complaint filed by employees that said they were sent home for wearing union pins and badges.
But Andrade’s hopes for legal recourse through his National Labor Relations Board complaint are slim, said Sharon Block, executive director of Harvard’s Center for Labor and a Just Economy.
“It could take years,” Block said. “Unfortunately, we have a labor law that's just extremely weak, and the penalties for employers who do violate the law by firing workers in retaliation for organizing are pitiful.”
It’s in the corporation’s best interest to delay the process, Block said, “because they get to do what they want to do during this time,” she said. “And if they're ultimately found to have violated their duty to bargain in good faith, there's truly, absolutely no penalty.”
Contract negotiations operate in a similar fashion, Block said, with no required timeline to reach an agreement within a certain time.
“There's nothing in the law that even says you have to eventually get to an agreement,” she said. “The company just has to look like they are bargaining in good faith, and it's very hard for the union to prove that that the employer is actually not. You see it with Starbucks and Amazon: years can go by when they’re technically bargaining, but nothing happens and no agreement is reached.”
Yosef, who has worked at the Hadley store for 20 years, says she had never received a negative performance review until this year, after she began leading the union effort.
“If Trader Joe’s wasn’t scared of worker power, they would come to the table and negotiate a fair contract,” Yosef said to the crowd.
Since the Hadley election last year, three additional stores in California, Kentucky and Minnesota have voted to unionize.
