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    Regulators Accuse Amazon of Singling Out Union Organizers for Discipline

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    National Labor Relations Board officials said the company had applied its workplace rules unfairly, and asked it to change or scrap the regulations.Federal labor regulators have moved to force Amazon to scrap a rule that governs employees’ use of nonwork areas, accusing the company of illegally singling out union supporters in enforcing the policy.A complaint issued on Tuesday by the National Labor Relations Board’s Brooklyn office said Amazon “selectively and disparately enforced the rule,” which applied to distributing materials and to solicitation activities, “by discriminatorily applying it against employees who engaged in union activity.”The complaint amounted to a finding of merit in a charge brought by the Amazon Labor Union, which mounted organizing efforts — one successful, one not — at two warehouses on Staten Island this year. The case will be litigated before an administrative law judge unless it is settled beforehand, and Amazon could appeal an adverse ruling to the national labor board in Washington.The complaint said the company applied the solicitation policy unlawfully when it prohibited workers from posting a pro-union sign in a nonwork area at one of the Staten Island warehouses, known as LDJ5. The company threatened discipline if the workers posted the sign or did not remove the sign, according to the complaint, which also said at least one worker was disciplined under the solicitation policy.The complaint also accuses the company of disciplining two workers to discourage them from engaging in union activity.After winning a vote to represent roughly 8,000 workers at another Staten Island warehouse, JFK8, the union lost an election at LDJ5 by a wide margin in May.Under Amazon’s stated policy, employees are prohibited from soliciting co-workers for, say, financial contributions on company grounds during work time, or from distributing nonwork-related material in work areas. The policy also prevents nonemployees from conducting any kind of solicitation on company grounds.The labor board’s complaint said Amazon could reinstate the policy only if it explicitly stated that the policy did not apply to organizing and related activity by workers, known as protected concerted activity. The complaint also seeks to require that all supervisors, managers, security personnel and outside consultants hired by Amazon receive training on workers’ federally-protected labor rights. It could affect most of the company’s roughly one million employees nationwide.(The complaint is not clear on whether the training would be nationwide or only in the New York region, and a spokeswoman for the labor board was not immediately able to clarify.)“Amazon is committing flagrant human rights violations by unlawfully disciplining A.L.U. supporters and prohibiting union organizing in the company’s break rooms,” said Connor Spence, the union’s treasurer, in a statement. “Union organizing in employer break rooms is a protected right mandated by the National Labor Relations Board.” Paul Flaningan, an Amazon spokesman, said in a statement, “These allegations are completely without merit, and we look forward to showing that through the process.”The complaint comes at an important moment for the Amazon Labor Union. This month, a hearing officer for the labor board recommended rejecting Amazon’s formal challenge to the union’s JFK8 victory. (Amazon has said it will probably appeal a ruling on this question.) But defending the victory consumed time that the union had hoped to spend on pushing for a contract at the warehouse.In October, the labor board will hold an election involving the union and roughly 400 workers at an Amazon warehouse in Albany, N.Y.Karen Weise More

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    Labor Board Proposes to Increase Legal Exposure for Franchised Chains

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    Federal labor regulators on Tuesday proposed a rule that would make more companies legally liable for labor law violations committed by their contractors or franchisees.Under the proposal, which governs when a company is considered a so-called joint employer, the National Labor Relations Board could hold a company like McDonald’s liable if one of its franchisees fired workers who tried to unionize, even if the parent company exercised only indirect control over the workers. Indirect control can include requiring the franchisee to use software that locks in certain scheduling practices and setting limits on what the workers can be paid.Under the current approach, adopted in 2020, when the board had a majority of Republican appointees, the parent company could be held liable for such labor law violations only if it exerted direct control over the franchisee’s employees — such as directly determining their schedules and pay.The joint-employer rule also determines whether the parent company must bargain with employees of a contractor or franchisee if those employees unionize.Employees and unions generally prefer to bargain with the parent company and to hold it accountable for labor law violations because the parent typically has more power than the contractor or franchisee to change workplace policies and make concessions.“In an economy where employment relationships are increasingly complex, the board must ensure that its legal rules for deciding which employers should engage in collective bargaining serve the goals of the National Labor Relations Act,” Lauren McFerran, the chairwoman of the board, which has a Democratic majority, said in a statement.The legal threshold for triggering a joint-employer relationship under labor law has changed frequently in recent years, depending on the political composition of the labor board. In 2015, a board led by Democrats changed the standard from “direct and immediate” control to indirect control.As a result of that shift, parent companies could also be considered joint employers of workers hired by a contractor or franchisee if the parent had the right to control certain working conditions — like firing or disciplining workers — even if it didn’t act on that right.Under President Donald J. Trump, the board moved to undo that change. The Republican-led board not only restored the standard of direct and immediate control, it also required that the control exercised by the parent be “substantial,” making it even more difficult to deem a parent company a joint employer.The franchise business model has faced rising pressure. On Monday, Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said he had signed a bill creating a council to regulate labor practices in the fast food industry. The council has the power to raise the minimum wage for the industry in California to $22 an hour next year, compared with a statewide minimum of $15.50, and to issue health and safety standards to protect workers.The fast food industry strongly opposed the measure, arguing that it would raise costs for employers and prices for consumers. More

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    Starbucks Illegally Denied Raises to Union Members, Labor Board Says

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    Federal labor regulators have accused Starbucks of illegally discriminating against unionized employees by denying them wage and benefit increases that the company put in place for nonunion employees.In a complaint on Wednesday, a regional office of the National Labor Relations Board accused the company of breaking the law when its chief executive, Howard Schultz, “promised increased wages and benefits at U.S. stores if its employees rejected the union as their bargaining representative,” and when it withheld raises and benefits from unionized workers.The labor board is seeking, among other things, that affected employees be made whole for the denial of benefits and wage increases. It is also asking that Mr. Schultz read a notice to all employees informing them that some had been unlawfully denied benefits and pay increases and explaining their rights under federal labor law. Alternatively, a board official could read this material to employees in Mr. Schultz’s presence.The labor board’s case is scheduled for a hearing on Oct. 25 before an administrative law judge, unless Starbucks settles with the agency beforehand. Starbucks could appeal any ruling by an administrative judge to the full board.In a statement, Starbucks said that it was required under federal law to negotiate changes in wages and benefits with the union and that it was therefore not allowed to make such changes unilaterally, as it can in nonunion stores. “Wage and benefits are ‘mandatory’ subjects of the collective bargaining process,” the statement said.Workers United, the union representing the company’s newly organized workers, said the complaint affirmed its contention that Starbucks was discouraging union activity.“He claims to run a ‘different kind of company,’ yet in reality, Howard Schultz is simply a billionaire bully who is doing everything he can to crush workers’ rights,” Maggie Carter, a worker who helped unionize her store in Knoxville, Tenn., said in a statement.More than 225 out of roughly 9,000 corporate-owned Starbucks locations in the United States have voted to unionize since last fall.Mr. Schultz began indicating that the company would roll out new benefits, but only for nonunion workers, shortly after he began his third tour as the company’s chief executive in April.The next month, the company announced a series of new benefits — including additional career development opportunities, better tipping options and more sick time — but only for stores that hadn’t unionized or weren’t in the process of unionizing. The benefits were to begin in the coming months.The company unveiled wage increases as well, some of which had already been announced and which the company said would apply to all workers. But other increases were new and would apply only to nonunion workers.For example, according to Reggie Borges, a Starbucks spokesman, all employees stood to benefit from a companywide $15-an-hour minimum wage, but nonunion workers hired by May 2 would get a 3 percent raise if that proved higher than $15.The wage policy appears to have sown confusion, with some employees briefly receiving a pay increase that was then withdrawn. Colin Cochran, a worker at a store near Buffalo that initially voted to unionize and then voted against the union in a rerun election decided this month, provided pay stubs showing that his $16.28 hourly wage had increased to $16.77 the first week of August, when Starbucks began the pay increases nationwide. But Mr. Cochran’s pay stub for the second week of August showed his hourly pay dropping back to $16.28. (The union is challenging the election loss at this store.)Mr. Borges said that the reversion to the previous wage had resulted from an inadvertent error and that unionized stores would get wage increases in September.Workers involved in union campaigns at other Starbucks locations said the denial of pay and benefit increases to unionized stores had slowed their organizing efforts.Kylah Clay, a Starbucks worker in Boston who helped organize several stores in the area, said inquiries from employees at other stores who were interested in unionizing had dropped off substantially not long after the company’s pay and benefits announcement in May. But they picked up recently after the pay and many benefit changes took effect, she said. More

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    Trader Joe’s Workers Vote to Unionize at a Second Store

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    Workers at a Trader Joe’s in Minneapolis voted on Friday to unionize, adding a second unionized store to the more than 500 locations of the supermarket chain.Employees at a Trader Joe’s in Massachusetts voted to unionize last month, part of a trend of recent union victories involving service workers at companies like Starbucks, Apple and Amazon.The Minneapolis vote was 55 to 5, according to the National Labor Relations Board, which held the election.The Minneapolis workers voted to join Trader Joe’s United, the same independent union that represents workers in Hadley, Mass. Workers at a third Trader Joe’s store, in Colorado, have filed for a union election, but the labor board has not yet authorized a vote or set an election date.In a statement referring to the election results in Minneapolis, a Trader Joe’s spokeswoman, Nakia Rohde, said, “While we are concerned about how this new rigid legal relationship will impact Trader Joe’s culture, we are prepared to immediately begin discussions with their collective bargaining representative to negotiate a contract.”Sarah Beth Ryther, a Trader Joe’s worker in Minneapolis who was involved in the organizing campaign, said her co-workers had been motivated in part by dissatisfaction with pay and benefits, issues that helped prompt the union campaign in Massachusetts. Workers have complained that the company has made its benefits less generous in recent years, though some benefits have improved more recently.But Ms. Ryther said she and her colleagues were also concerned that the store, which is in an area where some residents struggle with drug dependency and mental health challenges, appeared not to have protocols or systems in place to handle certain emergencies. She cited a person who came into the store last fall with what appeared to be a gunshot wound and collapsed into her arms.Police officers arrived quickly, Ms. Ryther said, but Trader Joe’s did little to address the aftermath, such as explaining to workers what had happened. Several days passed before she was told that she could collect workers’ compensation while taking time off to deal with the trauma, she said.Trader Joe’s did not respond to a request for comment on Ms. Ryther’s account of the workers’ complaints and the store’s conditions, but, in her statement, Ms. Rohde said the company was “committed to responding quickly when circumstances change to ensure we are doing the right thing to support our crew.”In March 2020, the company’s chief executive, Dan Bane, sent a letter to employees referring to “the current barrage of union activity that has been directed at Trader Joe’s” and asserting that union advocates “clearly believe that now is a moment when they can create some sort of wedge in our company through which they can drive discontent.” More

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    Chipotle Closes Maine Store Looking to Unionize, Workers Say

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    Workers who filed for a union election at a Chipotle in Augusta, Maine, are accusing the company of seeking to undermine their campaign by closing the restaurant.The company notified employees of the closing on Tuesday morning, hours before the two sides were scheduled to take part in a hearing before the National Labor Relations Board about the possible election.“We have been unable to adequately staff this remote restaurant,” Laurie Schalow, the company’s chief corporate affairs officer, said in a statement. Ms. Schalow added that “because of these ongoing staffing challenges, there is no probability of reopening in the foreseeable future, so we’ve made the decision to permanently close the restaurant.”A lawyer representing the workers filed a charge with the labor board contending that the closing was an illegal act of retaliation.“I’m referring to this as Union Busting 101,” said the lawyer, Jeffrey Neil Young, who frequently represents unions in the state. “It’s a classic response — employees decide to organize and the employer says it’s closing the store.”Read More on Organized Labor in the U.S.Apple: Employees at a Baltimore-area Apple store voted to unionize, making it the first of the company’s 270-plus U.S. stores to do so. The result provides a foothold for a budding movement among Apple retail employees.Starbucks: When a Rhodes scholar joined Starbucks in 2020, none of the company’s 9,000 U.S. locations had a union. She hoped to change that by helping to unionize its stores in Buffalo. Improbably, she and her co-workers have far exceeded their goal.Amazon: A little-known independent union scored a stunning victory at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island. But unlike at Starbucks, where organizing efforts spread in a matter of weeks, unionizing workers at Amazon has been a longer, messier slog.A Shrinking Movement: Although high-profile unionization efforts have dominated headlines recently, union membership has seen a decades-long decline in the United States.The labor board will investigate the charge and issue a formal complaint if it finds merit in the accusation, at which point the case would go before an administrative law judge. The two sides could reach a settlement beforehand.A handful of workers at the store walked off the job in mid-June to protest what they said were unsafe conditions that stemmed from understaffing and insufficient training.“Not being properly trained to prepare food has a lot of risks to both the preparer and the people eating the food,” said Brandi McNease, a worker involved in the walkout and the union campaign. “You worry about knife skills, using equipment that is dangerous — hot, sharp.”Within a few days, the company closed the store to the public while it sought to improve staffing, including retaining two recruiting experts, according to Ms. Schalow. During this time, workers continued to report to the store, where they received some training and helped clean it, but often for fewer hours a week than they previously worked.On June 22, workers filed a petition to hold a union election. The labor board requires at least 30 percent of workers to indicate their support before it will order one.The hearing scheduled for Tuesday was meant to consider arguments from the two sides about the proposed election. Chipotle had asserted in filings that the election should not go forward, partly because the store was understaffed and so the workers eligible to vote would not be fully representative of its eventual work force.Mr. Young, the lawyer representing the workers, said the closing could chill organizing efforts at other stores in the chain, including those underway in Lansing, Mich., where workers have also filed for a union election, and New York City.“By closing the Augusta store, it’s signaling to Chipotle workers elsewhere who are involved in or contemplating nascent organizational drives that if you organize, you might be out of job,” Mr. Young said.Ms. Schalow, the Chipotle official, said in her statement that closing the store “has nothing to do with union activity.” The company said it had closed 13 locations out of about 3,000 because of staffing issues, performance, lease agreements and other business reasons over the past 18 months. Most of the closings appear to have come in the first half of last year.Chipotle has offered the Augusta workers four weeks of severance pay based on their hours over the past two weeks, which have typically been lower than before the restaurant closed to the public. It has not offered to place the workers at other locations in Maine, the nearest of which is roughly an hour away, according to the company.Ms. McNease said she and her co-workers planned to fight to have the store reopened. “No one is bailing now,” she said.Chipotle is among several employers in the service industry whose workers have sought to unionize over the past year. Roughly 200 corporate-owned Starbucks locations have voted to unionize since last fall, as have workers at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island, an REI store in Manhattan and an Apple store in Maryland.The labor board has formally accused Starbucks of closing certain stores in retaliation for union organizing. The company has denied the accusations.Last week, Starbucks said it was closing 16 additional stores because of safety concerns like crime, which it said have been reflected in incident reports over the past year. The union representing the newly unionized Starbucks workers has filed charges of unfair labor practices, accusing the company of closing the stores to undermine organizing activity or avoid bargaining with unionized workers. More

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    Labor Agency Seeks Broad Order Against Starbucks in Federal Court

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    Federal labor regulators have asked a court to force Starbucks to stop what they say is extensive illegal activity in response to a nationwide campaign in which workers at more than 150 corporate-owned stores have voted to unionize.In a petition filed Tuesday with U.S. District Court in Buffalo, officials with the National Labor Relations Board accused the company of firing and disciplining union supporters; intimidating and threatening workers to discourage them from voting for the union; and effectively offering benefits to workers if they opposed the union.The agency is also seeking the reinstatement of seven Buffalo-area employees whom, it said, Starbucks had illegally forced out in retaliation for their union-organizing activities, and an order effectively recognizing the union in a Buffalo-area store where the union lost a vote despite strong initial support.The agency said in its filings that the court’s intervention was necessary to stop Starbucks’s “virulent, widespread and well-orchestrated response to employees’ protected organizing efforts” and that without the proposed remedies, Starbucks would “accomplish its unlawful objective of chilling union support, both in Buffalo and nationwide.”Reggie Borges, a Starbucks spokesman, rejected the accusations. “As we have said previously, we believe these claims are false and will be prepared to defend our case,” Mr. Borges wrote in an email.Matt Bodie, a former lawyer for the labor board who teaches labor law at St. Louis University, said it was not unusual for the agency to seek reinstatement of ousted workers. But he said the nationwide breadth of the injunction the agency was seeking was far less common, as was the request for the court to order recognition of a union at a store where the union initially lost its election.“It’s a big step in line with the Biden board’s commitment to a more rigorous and aggressive approach to labor law enforcement,” Mr. Bodie wrote in an email.The labor board has already issued more than 30 formal complaints finding merit in allegations similar to the ones it cataloged in its petition on Tuesday. It typically takes months or years to adjudicate such complaints, and the board asserted that allowing the process to run its course while the company continued to break the law would “cement this chill and nullify the impact of a final remedy.”The agency said that unlawful anti-union activity had begun shortly after workers in Buffalo went public with their union campaign in late August, and that it had escalated after two Buffalo-area stores won union votes in December. It said Starbucks had forced out several union supporters for violating rules that the company had not previously enforced.The company “quickly jettisoned its past practices to target union supporters more effectively,” the labor board wrote.A federal judge recently denied the labor board’s request to reinstate pro-union workers it said Starbucks had unlawfully forced out in a similar, if narrower, case in Arizona.The judge found that in the case of two workers, there was not evidence of retaliation for union activities, or the evidence was “inconsistent” with the accusations.In the case of a third worker, the judge found that both sides had arguments supporting their positions and that an administrative proceeding might ultimately show that Starbucks sought to retaliate over the worker’s union activities. But the judge concluded that Starbucks would have fired the worker even absent her union involvement. More

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    Microsoft Pledges Neutrality in Union Campaigns at Activision

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    The accord could ease the path for thousands of workers to unionize at the game company, which Microsoft is acquiring, and addresses an antitrust objection.Microsoft and the Communications Workers of America union announced an agreement on Monday that would make it easier for employees to unionize at the video game maker Activision Blizzard, which Microsoft is acquiring for $70 billion.Under the deal, which appears to be the first of its kind in the technology industry, Microsoft agreed to remain neutral if any of Activision’s eligible U.S. employees want to unionize, and employees would no longer have to petition the National Labor Relations Board for an election. The company has almost 7,000 employees in the United States, most of whom will be eligible to unionize under the arrangement.A group of nearly 30 employees at one of Activision’s studios voted to unionize through an N.L.R.B. election in May despite Activision’s opposition to holding the election. But completing such a process can be time consuming, with unions and employers sometimes spending months or even years litigating the results.Through the agreement, workers will have access to an expedited process for unionizing, overseen by a neutral third party, in which they will indicate their support for a union either by signing cards or confidentially through an electronic platform.“This process does gives us and Microsoft a way to do this quote unquote election without spending the time, the effort and the controversy that goes along with an N.L.R.B. election,” Chris Shelton, the president of the Communications Workers union, said in an interview.The union said that the neutrality agreement resolved the antitrust concerns it had with the acquisition, and that it now supported the deal, which Microsoft has said will close by the end of next June.Mr. Shelton and Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, suggested that the deal could pave the way to wider unionization across the company and the industry. “This is a great opportunity for us to work with Chris and the C.W.A. and to learn and innovate,” Mr. Smith said in an interview. Microsoft said it was prepared to “build on” the deal in the future, but did not specifically comment on whether it planned to extend the terms to other gaming workers at the company.Microsoft indicated that under the agreement, it would refrain from an aggressive anti-union campaign if other Activision employees sought to unionize. “In practical terms, it means that we’re not going to try to jump in and put a thumb on the scale,” Mr. Smith said in the interview. “We will respect the fact that our employees are capable of making decisions for themselves and they have a right to do that.”Brad Smith of Microsoft said he was committed to engaging with unions “when employees wish to exercise their rights and Microsoft is presented with a specific unionization proposal.”Markus Schreiber/Associated PressFacing their own union campaigns, companies like Amazon and Starbucks have held frequent mandatory meetings with employees to argue that a union could leave them worse off.The labor board has issued complaints against Amazon that include accusations of threatening workers with a loss of benefits if they unionize, and against Starbucks over accusations that it fired workers who sought to form a union and effectively promised benefits to workers if they chose not to unionize. Both companies have denied the accusations. In a recent case brought by the N.L.R.B. in Arizona, a federal judge denied a request for an injunction to reinstate pro-union workers whom the labor board said Starbucks had forced out illegally.The agreement between Microsoft and the union would also protect workers’ right to communicate among themselves and with union officials about a union campaign — something many employers seek to discourage — and stipulates that disagreements between the company and the union will be resolved through an “expedited arbitration process.” N.L.R.B. complaints can take months or years to resolve.When Microsoft and Activision announced their blockbuster deal in January, the game maker was under stress as it faced accusations that senior executives had ignored sexual harassment and discrimination. Those concerns spurred organizing among Activision employees, including workers at its Raven Software studio in Wisconsin, which has developed games in popular franchises like Call of Duty.After a group of roughly 30 quality assurance, or Q.A., workers announced that they were seeking to unionize, Activision sought to convince the federal labor board that their election should not go forward. The game workers accused Activision of union-busting tactics, like increasing the pay of non-Raven Q.A. workers and splitting Q.A. workers up by embedding them across the Raven studio.Activision maintained that while some changes in this vein had come after the union campaign went public, the broader shift in approach had already been underway — for example, its move to change the status of hundreds of temporary and contingent workers to permanent full-time employees in the fall.The company argued that the entire Raven studio, comprising hundreds of workers, should have been allowed to vote on forming a union, rather than just a few dozen Q.A. workers. Q.A. employees, often on temporary contracts, are commonly considered the most overworked and underpaid members of game studios.In early March, the union signed a letter asking federal regulators to scrutinize the acquisition. “The potential takeover by Microsoft threatens to further undermine workers’ rights and suppress wages,” the letter said.Microsoft has since tried to strike a conciliatory tone. It said it would not stop Activision from voluntarily recognizing the union before a formal election, which Activision did not do. After the Raven Q.A. workers voted in late May to form the first union at a major North American game publisher, Phil Spencer, the head of gaming at Microsoft, told employees that he would recognize the Raven union once the deal between the two companies closed, the gaming news site Kotaku reported, citing a video of an employee town hall.Activision said on Friday that it was starting contract negotiations with the newly unionized Raven workers. “We decided to take this important step forward with our 27 represented employees and C.W.A. to explore their ideas and insights for how we might better serve our employees, players and other stakeholders,” Bobby Kotick, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement.In a blog post this month that appeared to foreshadow the deal, Mr. Smith announced a set of principles to guide Microsoft’s response to labor organizing, an indication that it was taking a more open approach across the company’s businesses.He wrote that he had observed Microsoft’s successful “collaborative experiences with works councils and unions” while working in Europe and said that in the United States the company would pursue “collaborative approaches that will make it simpler, rather than more difficult, for our employees to make informed decisions and to exercise their legal right to choose whether to form or join a union.”In the interview, Mr. Smith called the neutrality agreement “our first opportunity to put those principles into practice.”The Communications Workers of America, which represents employees at companies like AT&T Mobility, Verizon and The New York Times, has sought to organize tech industry workers in recent years. It has begun organizing retail workers at Apple Stores and helped workers at Google form a so-called minority union, which allows them to act together on workplace issues without having to win a union election.About a dozen retail employees at Google Fiber stores in Kansas City, Mo., who are formally employed by a Google contractor, recently voted to join the union.Kellen Browning More

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    Trader Joe’s Workers File to Hold Company’s First Union Election

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    The workers, at a store in western Massachusetts, cited health and safety concerns and cuts to benefits at the grocery chain.In a sign that service industry workers continue to have a strong interest in unionizing after successful votes at Starbucks, REI and Amazon, employees at a Trader Joe’s in western Massachusetts have filed for a union election. If they win, they will create the only union at Trader Joe’s, which has more than 500 locations and 50,000 employees nationwide.The filing with the National Labor Relations Board late Tuesday seeks an election involving about 85 employees who would form an independent union, Trader Joe’s United, rather than affiliate with an established labor organization. That echoes the independent union created by Amazon workers on Staten Island and the worker-led organizing at Starbucks.“Over the past however many years, changes have been happening without our consent,” said Maeg Yosef, an 18-year employee of the store who is a leader of the union campaign. “We wanted to be in charge of the whole process, to be our own union. So we decided to go independent.”Ms. Yosef said the union had support from over 50 percent of workers at the store, known as crew members.“We have always said we welcome a fair vote and are prepared to hold a vote if more than 30 percent of the crew wants one,” said a company spokeswoman, Nakia Rohde, alluding to the N.L.R.B. threshold for an election. “We are not interested in delaying the process in any way.”The company shared a similar statement with workers after they announced their intention to unionize in mid-May.In explaining their decision, Ms. Yosef and four colleagues, all of whom have been with the company for at least eight years, cited changes that had made their benefits less generous over time, as well as health and safety concerns, many of which were magnified during the pandemic.“This is probably where we get to all of these things coming together,” said Tony Falco, another worker involved in the union campaign, alluding to Covid-19.Mr. Falco said the store, in Hadley, took several reassuring steps during the first 12 to 15 months of the pandemic. Management enforced masking requirements and restrictions on the number of customers who could be in the store at once. It allowed workers to take leaves of absence while continuing to receive health insurance and gave workers additional “thank you” pay as high as $4 per hour.But Mr. Falco and others said the company was too quick to roll back many of these measures — including additional pay — as vaccines became widely available last year, and noted that the store had suffered Covid outbreaks in the past several weeks after masking became laxer. The store followed the policy of the local health board, which altered its mask mandate at various points, lifting it most recently in March.Some employees were also upset that the company did not inform them that the state had passed a law requiring employers to provide up to five paid days off for workers who missed work because of Covid.“It was in effect seven months, and they never announced it,” Ms. Yosef said. “I figured that out at the end of December, early January.”Ms. Rohde, the spokeswoman, said this account was incorrect, but four other employees who support the union also said the company had not told them of the policy.A Trader Joe’s store in New York. Early in the pandemic, the chief executive wrote that union advocates “clearly believe that now is a moment when they can create some sort of wedge in our company.”Benjamin Norman for The New York TimesTrader Joe’s has generally resisted unionization over the years, including earlier in the pandemic. In March 2020, the chief executive, Dan Bane, sent employees a letter referring to “the current barrage of union activity that has been directed at Trader Joe’s” and complaining that union advocates “clearly believe that now is a moment when they can create some sort of wedge in our company through which they can drive discontent.”The company’s response to the current campaign appears somewhat less hostile, though union organizers have recently filed charges of unfair labor practices, such as asking employees to remove pro-union pins.Several employees said a broader issue was underlying their frustrations: what they saw as the company’s evolution from a niche outlet known for pampering customers and treating employees generously to an industrial-scale chain that is more focused on the bottom line.The company’s employee handbook urges workers to provide a “Wow customer experience,” which it defines as “the feelings a customer gets about our delight that they are shopping with us.” But longtime employees say the company, which is privately held, has gradually become stingier with workers.For years, the company offered health care widely to part-timers. In the early 2010s, the company raised the average weekly hours that employees needed to qualify for full health coverage to 30 from roughly 20, informing those who no longer qualified that they could receive coverage under the federal Affordable Care Act instead. (The company dropped the threshold to 28 hours more recently.)“It was done under the guise of ‘You can get these plans, they’re the same plans,’ but they were not the same plans,” said Sarah Yosef, the Hadley store’s manager at the time, who later stepped back from the role and is now a frontline worker there.“I had to sit there individually with crew members saying you’re going to be losing health insurance,” added Ms. Yosef, who is married to Maeg Yosef.Retirement benefits have followed a similar trajectory: Around the same time, Trader Joe’s lowered its retirement contribution to 10 percent of an employee’s earnings from about 15 percent, for employees 30 and older. Beginning with last year’s benefit, the company lowered the percentage again for many workers, who saw the contribution fall to 5 percent. The company is no longer specifying any set amount.Tony Falco and Sarah Yosef at the Trader Joe’s store in Hadley. She said, “I had to sit there individually with crew members saying you’re going to be losing health insurance.”Holly Lynton for The New York TimesMs. Rohde, the spokeswoman, said the change was partly a response to indications from many workers that they would prefer a bonus to a retirement contribution.Workers said the company’s determination to provide an intimate shopping experience had often come at their expense amid a rapid increase in business over the past decade, and then again with the resurgence of business as pandemic restrictions lifted.For example, Trader Joe’s doesn’t have conveyor belts at checkout lines and instructs cashiers to reach into customers’ carts or baskets to unload items. This can appear to personalize the service but takes a physical toll on workers, who typically bend over hundreds of times during a shift.(The company asks workers to perform different tasks throughout the day so they are not constantly ringing up customers.)Maeg Yosef and her co-workers began discussing the union campaign over the winter, angry over the store’s failure to publicize the state-mandated paid leave benefit and the change in retirement benefits, and some have drawn inspiration from the successful union elections at Starbucks, Amazon and REI.Their union campaign may also benefit from the same leverage that workers at those companies enjoyed as a result of the relatively tight job market.“People just keep leaving — I know they want to hire people now,” Maeg Yosef said. “It’s hard to keep people around.” More