The Wobblies (IWW union) at a food co-op?

Are the “Wobblies” really still alive and kicking (wobbling)?

Is there something inherently inconsistent about unionizing a co-op?

To what union do workers at many supposedly progressive organizations turn?

Answers emerge from a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story about unionization efforts at a co-op market that sells organic and environmentally friendly food and health products — along with a bit of basic research I did inspired by the story.

The market is Pittsburgh’sEast End Food Co-op and Cafe, founded in the heady and utopian days of 1977 (yes, I remember them well, being a member of a 1975 high school class in a liberal college town).

The co-op’s philosophy, per the web site: it is a member-owned business that “exists to create, promote and sustain a healthy, strong and vibrant local community that serves the need for physical well-being, mutual respect, social connectedness and economic vitality while ensuring sustainability in the use of all resources toward this end.”

Wow! Can’t get any more hip and progressive than that mission statement, can you? Surely they’re good to their employees?

The market is self-defined as a consumer co-op, which typically means employees can become members, and members vote on major decisions, electing the board of directors from amongst their own number. Indeed, “democratic member control” is one of “the Seven Cooperative Principles,” along with “Voluntary & Open Membership.”

So it seems that in a co-op the line between labor and management should be quite blurry: employees can essentially become part of management by joining the co-op and becoming active in its democratically controlled management.

According to the article, there’s now trouble in paradise:

It’s not easy being green, even for people who make a living doing it.

Just ask the workers of the East End Food Co-op, who find themselves embroiled in two competing unionization drives at the Point Breeze market that sells organic and environmentally friendly food and health products.

Since May, several workers at the member-owned store have been organizing to join the Industrial Workers of the World, [a/k/a "the Wobblies"], hoping that forming a union will give them leverage against management. Then again, defining “management” isn’t that easy to do at a co-op since everyone, at least theoretically, has a say in how things are run.

Even so, Stacey Clampitt is helping to organize the IWW drive because, the 24-year-old Wilkinsburg resident says, “We feel that we don’t really have enough power over our workplace. We would like to be able to hold management accountable, to have checks and balances.”

Employee complaints: they want better health-care benefits and wages — current starting pay is a mere $6.50 per hour.

Making this a three-ring circus is the fact that one employee decided to start his own union as an alternative to the IWW. He had worked in management at the co-op for five weeks, but resigned his management position shortly before starting the union.

Where’s he coming from?

“My response here is essentially intuitive,” he said. “Maybe it’s because I’m reading that book by Gavin de Becker, ‘The Gift of Fear,‘ but my intuition is saying ‘No, no, no … danger.’ ”

Good intuition. Bringing any union into such a well-intentioned organization should be unnecessary and counterproductive.

Nice liberal non-employee members not in this for the profit may feel a strong sense of shock and betrayal, perhaps even more than the typical profit-minded business owner facing union organizing.

Collective bargaining will likely exacerbate, not heal, labor-management divisions. Just my opinion.

It is curious to note that the IWW, its membership reportedly down to about 2000 members worldwide, from a peak in 1923 of 100,000, seems to enjoy picking on organizations with “progressive” agendas and/or hip youth appeal:

IWW organizing drives in recent years have included a major campaign to organize Borders Books . . . , organizing drives at Wherehouse Music, Keystone Job Corps, the community organization ACORN, various homeless and youth centers in Portland, Oregon, and recycling shops in Berkeley, California.

Industrial Workers of the World, From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Primary source — Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Union idea splits workers at food co-op