The Food Chain Workers Alliance recently announced that the New Seasons Labor Union has allied with them.

I posted a self-written piece on independent unions and union organizing this blog in early July that made passing mention of the New Seasons Labor Union and that dealt with some of the forward steps beings taken in independent union organizing and some of the difficult or sticking points that I believe inhibits independent unionism as well. This post continues that thread.

The Food Chain Workers Alliance recently announced that the New Seasons Labor Union has allied with them. The Alliance is a broad-based coalition of "worker-based organizations whose members plant, harvest, process, pack, transport, prepare, serve, and sell food, organizing to improve wages and working conditions for all workers along the food chain." They have a five-point program and are based in Los Angeles. Their history includes working with the Restaurant Opportunities Center United and meeting with other similar organizations at a Labor Notes conference and allying with the Burgerville Workers Union, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, Teamsters Joint Council 7 and Teamsters Local 63, UFCW Local 770, some workers' centers, and progressive labor and food justice organizations. The Alliance is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and is one of a growing number of organizations positioned somewhere between being part of the nonprofit world, the labor movement or an emerging sector of social change-oriented worker advocacy organizations that we do not yet have a handy term to describe. I took up talking about the scope of such organizations in a post on this blog in late June.

Something interesting and potentially quite powerful is beginning to stir when organizations of this type begin allying under a shared umbrella. I don't know if we can continue to speak of this as independent unionism or not, and I don't believe that that question is primary at this point. What is of more interest to me is that at least some of the old barriers to labor unity are breaking down and that self-interest and necessity are likely driving people to a common table who just a short time ago were siloed. This has an obvious economic side to it: shared advocacy and action for workers rights through our food chain has a clear benefit for all of the workers involved and demonstrates a kind of incipient industrial unionism, if only in spirit. Built into this is a place for consumers, advocacy for racial and immigrant justice, and food justice. And at that point politics and political action, regional and national and global, become almost inescapable. This is not the old syndicalism of the Industrial Workers of the World or the more cautious political action of mainstream labor, but will this find a place in the tradition of social justice unionism or find that that is also limiting?

Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN) and other farmworker organizations have attempted something of this nature in the past when they allied with environmental and food safety organizations and attempted to convince supermarkets to post labels or signs at their doors showing that the vegetables and fruit that they were selling was safe, safely and humanely grown and harvested, and that the workers who were engaged in growing and harvesting the food were fairly paid and taken care of. Those campaigns riffed on the use of union labels that used to be prominently displayed at store entrances and in produce sections.They also depended to some extent on the good will or cooperation of some growers who could be convinced or forced by economic or political necessity to break ranks with the more avaricious growers and on a widespread willingness to implement just immigration and labor policies. It's helpful to read Larry Kleinman's writings for needed context here. Those efforts have not been as successful as we have hoped, but the fights to win better conditions in the fields and in food processing and get union labels and food justice signs up at stores is not over. The Food Chain Workers Alliance and the keystone spot that unions have in the Alliance may help to create a new wave of worker and working-class consumer activism. Whatever happens next, a new terrain for education, agitation and unionization is being mapped out.

The Alliance's announcement of the New Seasons Labor Union affiliation reads as follows:

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WELCOME NEW SEASONS LABOR UNION!

In June, FCWA members voted to welcome New Seasons Labor Union as the newest member of our alliance! New Seasons Market is a chain of grocery stores located in the Portland, OR and SW Washington areas. The NSLU began in the spring of 2022: "Workers at the Seven Corners store, inspired by the success of independent organizing around the country, decided to form a new union from the ground up. Since then, our union has grown to represent over a thousand workers at eleven stores. Our union is dedicated to the idea that all of us deserve fairness, respect, and dignity in our occupations, industry, and community. We fight to achieve this through collective action and collective bargaining."