Portland New Seasons Workers Go on 1-Day Strike

Nearly 1,100 workers from 10 unionized New Seasons Market locations in Portland walked off the job for a single-day Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) strike on Sunday, September 1. The strike came after 20 months of contract negotiations and multiple smaller strikes at individual New Seasons locations failed to produce an agreement between unionized workers and management. Of the unionized members, 82% voted to authorize the strike action, with 10 of the 11 unionized locations reaching quorum. Workers at the 11 unionized New Seasons locations are represented by the New Seasons Labor Union (NSLU), one of several independent unions driving a surge in Portland labor power since the COVID-19 pandemic. 

A ULP strike is one of two types of strike actions authorized under the National Labor Relations Act, the other being economic strikes. The law allows workers to hold ULP strikes in cases where employers have allegedly violated workers’ right to collectively organize and bargain. NSLU has filed numerous ULP charges with the National Labor Relations Board, the quasi-judicial federal agency tasked with enforcing US labor law, for “bad-faith bargaining, unilateral changes to terms and conditions of employment, refusal to furnish information, and coercive rules and statements, among other charges,” according to a press release published ahead of the strike; New Seasons management denies any wrongdoing. Workers participating in ULP strikes receive some federal legal protections that economic strikers do not: they cannot be permanently replaced by their employer and are entitled to reinstatement at the end of a strike.

During the strike, Woodstock Boulevard was filled with supportive honking as approximately a dozen NSLU members at its New Seasons location picketed outside. Workers carried red-and-white signs reading “ON STRIKE - UNFAIR EMPLOYER - DO NOT PATRONIZE.” New Seasons Market brought in employees from its corporate office to staff the striking stores, but at least on Woodstock, no locals appeared to consider crossing the picket line. A group of Reed freshmen on their way to a tour of the Woodstock Farmers Market watched the picket line with great curiosity as they passed.

Teodore Wirta-Kracke, a union member who has worked at the Woodstock New Seasons for two and a half years, said he had “personally seen the quality [of life] get worse” for employees during his time there. While the MIT Living Wage Calculator reports that a single, childless individual working a standard 2080 hours per year in Multnomah County would need to make $26.45 per hour (roughly $55,000 a year) to support themselves, the starting wage at New Seasons is $16.25 an hour, a full $10.20/hour under living wage and just $0.30/hour over minimum wage. Just five years ago New Seasons promised $3 over minimum wage as their starting salary, Wirta-Kracke said, but that has not materialized. 

Wirta-Kracke summarized the union’s key demands in contract negotiations as a living wage, consistent two-day weekends, and stronger, more stable benefits coverage. He said that New Seasons management is currently moving in the opposite direction from the union’s demands on all three of these issues. This creates a situation where, as Wirta-Kracke says, workers are “busting [their] ass” to make a living and secure benefits.

Although Wirta-Kracke said was not personally present for contract negotiations, he understood that New Seasons management has been “late or unprepared for every meeting” with union negotiators over the past 20 months. He said management puts down conditions for signing a contract and then rewrites them, and felt they were generally “just trying to shy away from change and keep workers in limbo.” The Woodstock New Seasons, along with other locations, voted to unionize in December 2022, and employees have been working without a contract since then.

The NSLU strike co-occurred with a three-day ULP strike by Portland Fred Meyer workers represented by UFCW Local 555. Like at New Seasons, union members at Fred Meyer have returned to work, but unlike their counterparts, Fred Meyer workers are urging a consumer boycott of their employer. 

Although New Seasons workers have returned to the job without a contract, the September 1 strike was intended as a warning to New Seasons management that NSLU is willing to escalate if they continue to be denied a fair contract. According to workers at the Woodstock picket line, escalation could look like more strikes and more unionization at the 11 remaining non-union New Seasons locations. A plan of action is not in place quite yet, though. To coordinate escalation, NSLU’s steering committee would have to reconvene and vote on a new course of action, which would then be voted on by members, much like how the September 1 strike came about.