Whole Foods Market announced Wednesday because of a petition from its workers it will no longer recognize the union operating since September 2002 at its Madison store, 3313 University Ave.
A vote scheduled for Nov. 17 to decide whether United Food and Commercial Workers would continue to represent store employees was delayed because of charges employees tried to solicit petition signatures on company property and management was involved in the solicitation.
\The company can ask the union if they can withhold recognition,"" Whole Foods employee Jackson Bowman said, ""but they cannot demand, which is what they're doing.""
Whole Foods denied all allegations of unfair labor practices and announced it would stop recognizing the union without a vote.
""It is possible for the UFCW to attempt to challenge this decision,"" Whole Foods President John Mackey said in a statement, ""but the company fully expects to put this brief period of unionization behind us and move on together with a renewed sense of cooperation and shared vision.""
Most of the store's employees now oppose the union because pro-union workers quit or were fired, according to Charlie Hoyt, a UW-Madison junior who worked at Whole Foods.
""Not a single person I know changed their mind,"" he said. Before he quit, he added, an employee followed him around closely while he was trying to tell other employees he had been threatened with firing if he took off spring break.
Bowman said he witnessed an employee soliciting signatures from employees on company property on two different occasions, which the company also denies.
The union organizers were ""well-respected members of the Whole Foods employee world in Madison"" until management began telling workers the union would cause a ""bureaucratic mess,"" according to former employee Jocelyn Luglia.
""The idea was for us to have a bigger voice in how we were treated,"" she said. ""They treated us like children.""
Whole Foods employees voted 65-54 to create the union, the only one in the history of the chain, after disagreements over the dress code and other policies. The store stopped allowing piercing and offering workers damaged merchandise at discount prices, Hoyt said.
Current employees of the store have called its merit-based bonuses superior to the union's seniority-based pay, but not everyone agrees stores can top union benefits.
""We had a good thing going and they just wouldn't bargain with us,"" Luglia said.
