I work for Natural Grocers, a middle sized chain of health food stores in the US. Over the past couple months, we've received several raises, along with the announcement of an employee appreciation month for Febuary. We've been lavished with free food, novelty company hats and scarves, coupon books, etc.
Today, middle management (dept managers, assistant dept managers, etc) received a notification that NG is launching “union awareness” training modules at the end of the month. I'm assuming this, the novelty gifts, and extremely late raises (we are only just now as of this week competitive in wages with other grocery stores in town) are attempts to stop more people from leaving due to the understaffing, poor scheduling, poor pay, immense workloads, dirty working conditions, and so on that plague the grocery industry, and our company specifically. Although we can see the module on our training website, it isn't accessible yet. I don't know if I can get a photo either, they have multiple cameras pointed directly at our training computers.
I live paycheck to paycheck at the moment, I can't fight for myself right now without risking my entire life, but the issues I've mentioned here are only just a few, and we've been asking HR to raise our wages and listen to our complaints for a literal two years now, all the way back to when You Know What started and we all became essential heroes. I can try to provide as much information as possible, but I'm posting here as vaguely as I can to protect myself, and also in the hopes someone can help raise the alarm and light the fire under Natural Grocer's feet.
We want our right to unionize protected, we want higher, fairer pay sooner, we want fair scheduling and comprehensive hands-on training, we want clean stores, we want our corporate to listen to us when we reach out to ask for help – they won't even approve tickets to have the holes in our store's walls repainted.
Stores have no dedicated janitorial positions or shifts, mask mandates are/were ignored, many stores are run down or dirty with holes in the walls, broken shelves, and cracked and uneven floors, multiple stores are so small product has to sit in carts in the backrooms/coolers because there aren't enough shelves, the employees are pressured to work 10 hr shifts and come in on days off by upper management, I could go on, but hopefully that paints a picture of how desperate so many of us feel.
Most of us are paycheck to paycheck, like I mentioned earlier. With the recent raises, and our yearly performance raises (a whole 20c), most of us who have worked here longer than a year have suddenly realized we cannot reasonably leave due to the HCOL in our area, and feel trapped.
Please help us. Please spread the word Natural Grocers is an anti-vaxx, anti-union hellhole peddling woo-woo pseudoscience and overworking its employees to death. There are 162 stores across America. Leave reviews on the ones closest to you, contact corporate (don't know if I can drop links but it's on the website homepage), call your local stores and complain to the managers. If whoever is sending those faxes can do it to any NG fax machines, send em, every single store has one in the back. I can say at the very least NG has always been very concerned about its public image, so any public comments/concerns not by employees will at the very least be seen.
I'll update as I can, IF I can, and answer any questions that don't identify me, but I have a family and need to be careful. Thank you.
edit: fixed formatting, on mobile sorry.