Parking lot conspiracy theories are not the only things Trader Joe’s has to worry about this month.
Recent documents from the National Labor Relations Review Board indicate that the governmental organization believes Trader Joe’s employees interfered with union activities.
Trader Joe’s is a privately-owned chain of grocery stores founded in Pasadena, Calif., during the late 1960s. It is now owned by families who also own part of Aldi Nord. It does not have a business relationship with Aldi Sud or U.S. Aldi stores.
As of last June, Trader Joe’s had 500 grocery store locations and 50,000 employees, said a report in The New York Times.
According to a complaint dated May 25 and shared this week by The Huffington Post that is related to a Minnesota, Minn., Trader Joe’s location, the company “has been interfering with, restraining, and coercing employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed,” to them.
Store leaders removed union literature from a break room at the location last October and November, per the complaint. It also said that an employee “announced an overly broad prohibition on solicitation and distribution of literature by posting a notice on the bulletin board in the employee breakroom at Respondent’s facility.”
“This is just the beginning of holding Trader Joe’s accountable,” said a tweet from the Trader Joe’s Unite union.
Workers in Minneapolis are just some of the Trader Joe’s employees to unionize. According to The New York Times, the first store to unionize was in Massachusetts. On the West Coast, a store in Oakland, Calif., unionized and further south, a store in Louisville, Ky., did as well.
Trader Joe’s Unite also shared NLRB documents dated May 26 related to the Kentucky unionization efforts. The Times reported that worker Connor Hovey said Trader Joe’s “fired two employees who were supportive of the union campaign and has formally disciplined several more,” in Kentucky.
“A Trader Joe’s spokeswoman said that the company had never disciplined an employee for seeking to unionize but that unionizing efforts didn’t exempt an employee from job responsibilities,” said the report.
Trader Joe’s is among several companies accused of targeting union supporters. The New York Times report said Apple, Starbucks and REI employees have done so as well.
As of Wednesday, most headlines regarding Trader Joe’s weren’t about union busting. Instead, they were about the store’s parking lots. These lots have been criticized since at least 2019, when McSweeney’s published the humor piece “I am a Trader Joe’s Parking Lot and I am Here to Destroy You”.
“If you spend any time on social media, looking at things about Trader Joe’s, you will find there are lots of conspiratorial theories about our parking lots,” said Tara Miller, on a recent episode of the company’s Inside Trader Joe’s podcast. Matt Sloan, a “marketing guy” with the company told her that the company doesn’t create bizarre parking lots on purpose, according to a report in The Hill.
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