New Seasons: Don't mourn... Organize!

I am also an employee at NS and I am wondering if you could give folks some good reasons why employees at NS would want to join this struggle? Also - out of curosity, why have you not included Daily Grind in this Union?

you wrote: "Friends, there is no way that you are going to be able to stop N.S. from moving into the neighboorhood."

If New Seasons can't be prevented from moving in, it will be for the sole reason that too many people think like that.

I'm sure glad no one listened to voices like yours during previous struggles, large and small, that have happened in this country and this town. Here in Portland, the big park on Powell (between 20th and 26th) was saved when Fred Meyer wanted to take that spot. In the 70's, a major highway was removed from downtown and the waterfront park put in. At one time, an interstate was planned for SE that would have plowed right through the neighborhood that New Seasons wants to move into. In all these cases, I'm sure there were naysayers who claimed that "there is no way that you are going to be able to" [blank], and all three of those were bigger situations than this one.

Many people would say that "there is no way" the IWW can organize enough workers in Portland for it to be significant. Probably far more than those of us who think you've got a chance. I've got faith in your cause, friend, and have helped how I can and will continue to. Perhaps you could rethink your position and let a little belief in the door.

We can pick up the topic in person sometime, maybe at a worker-owned coffee shop somewhere, whose rent is also going to go up because of the gentrification in that same neighborhood, and might be going closing as a result.

If you want solidarity from People's workers, perhaps you should support them in their struggle against New Seasons, if they view the situation that way.

Why not work first on keeping NS out, and if that fails make sure the workers organize as soon as the doors open. If the community is focused on this one-two punch from the outset it would likely work.

As far as keeping NS out...

The only real strategy in this case will be to go to the land use hearing in mid August, and be armed with knowledge about zoning, comprehensive plans, and City definitions of appropriate building scale, character, and real stats on impacts on traffic flow and safety.

The local neighborhood association (called HAND) has a land use committee that seems interested in giving neighbors the kind of knowledge that will actually be useful at a land use hearing.

"We don't want it!" will fall on deaf ears. Figuring out the gray areas in city codes and comprehensive plans is the only real strategy.

I'm sure HAND will announce this meeting as best they can. If you really want to be informed call Southeast Uplift 232 0010 and ask them when the meeting will happen.

I'm new to this website and maybe I don't understand fully what all of the ramifications of NS opening on Division are. I think that it would be good to give Wild Oats local competition. I'm, of course, assuming that it will open.
If it does, I don't understand why a Union would be necessary. It always seemed to me that Unions were formed in businesses that treated their workers poorly. I've always felt that this is the first job I work at where I feel respected for the work I do. I feel comfortable talking with the owner of the company and feel that my voice is heard. This is still a locally owned and run store, very different from the Wild Oats markets. It feels like New Seasons is one of the good guys. It feels like a family business. I think it would be a shame to introduce feelings of ill-will between managers and the people that they supervise. Maybe you could shed a little light on this subject for me...Unions 101?

Fight Safeway, fight the Kroger empire, fight Wild Oats if you like, but New Seasons? You're silly and marginalized. I make a solid $14.50 an hour, definitely not a high-powered consumer, and I'd rather spend my money at New Seasons than those other entities. Their quality/selection is the best in town.

Otherwise, your ghetto mentality is just juvenile. Sorry, but until collectivization occurs renters live in houses owned by others, by those paying property taxes. Suppressing property values only decreases tax revenue and continues the erosion of public services we are currently enjoying (i.e. no schools after April 20, burglars, rapists walking free). Furthermore, you live across from Ladd's Addition, a veritable oasis for the too-well to do. You didn't expect a someone to cater to these people?

The bottom line is, New Season was an escape pod for Natures/GNC/Wild Oats employees. And it is (still) locally owned. The creation of new jobs in the inner Portland Eastside area is a damn good thing Hoping to keep your rent down $25 a month is short-sighted and, well, juvenile. Grow up. Economies do not maintain stasis. They either expand or contract. And with these movements, the real underprivileged feel the sway in cuts from state programs. We're not talking Wal-Mart, Kroger, Home Depot here.

even if we CAN stop them from moving into the division area, don't employees at other stores currently open deserve a union? Its no fun to work the registers or stock the shelves and get paid like you don't have carpal tunnel from doing just that.

ps. its great that NS is locally owned, that rocks. But local business owners can be nasty too. Its awesome that the employees there make a little money and can talk to their owner, but you need to be able to talk to yourselves.

See what a locally owned business with a non-saintly owner looks like at:
 http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2003/09/272604.shtml

How many people work in the "natural foods" industry in Portland and Oregon?
Guess?
-NewSeasons(4 stores and 2 in the near future)
-WholeFoods (murmors about two more stores)
-Wild Oats ahhh the old Nature's (11 stores in Oregon, several at risk of closing due to mis-management)
-Trader Joes (I know of at least 4 in portland)
-People's, Foodfront, The Daily Grind, Alberta Co-op, 1st alternative, lifesource(salem),
-Kroger's outlets for natural foods at FredMeyer and QFC


Like any other business, the grocery bus is cyclical. The months of August, September and October are the slowest months of the fiscal year. This is when rather than paying unemployment to clerks whose hours have been drastically cut, wild oats and co. force the worker to use up benefit(vacation) hours to make up for the difference in their paychecks, which leaves them vunerable to illness and emergencies. As hours are cut, health benefits are at risk, since to receive any decent coverage, workers have to average 30-35 hours/week. Verbal abuse is rampant as store managers are forced to meet unattainable sales and labor (labor is usually budgeted as a percentage of sales at Wild Oats) goals, Employee workers comp. claims are up, the tension rises as the workers find a way to get fairly compensated through theft and sabatoge.

Not a pretty picture is it?

Need a Union, BAD!

If you're gonna start a strike, I suggest you do it in the fall or after new years, not in the spring or summer. The union also needs to include floor managers who have been abused by wild oats because of their salaried status. Some work up to 60 hours a week with no overtime compensation.

Conditions at Wild Oats are horrible and we need to change things.

Here's a crazy idea: run wild oats out of town and keep the stores as worker owned co-ops.

I was fired from W.O. Spring '03 for talking. After suffering verbal abuse and gender intolerance from my department manager for nearly a year I was fired for exercising non-defamatory free speech. With the support of a Union to force Upper Management to stop mid-management abuses, the situation would not have escalated as it often does when department managers are blindly supported by Store Directors, which is usually the case in the absence of a union. Most of the employees I know are unhappy, as are many people in retail industries. Many of the people I worked with were hanging on expecting store closure and the guarantee of unemployment checks. Not the most positive working environment I can imagine. My friend resigned from a company, natural in name only, and the store tried to appropriate her personal recipes (which she had been developing for years). She had her day in court when a Store Director lied on the witness stand and claimed that she had freely given them her recipes at no charge and that the store would continue to use them after her resignation. She had no witness to prove that she had NEVER given the recipes away (how could she?), and since this company had a "witness" they won and my friend lost. A certain unnatural company is so desperate for staff who are naive or uninformed that they offer a "bounty" for store staff "headhunters" to bring in new staff members, paying a generous bonus to any staff member who can find a manager foolish or hungry enough to board their foundering ship. Managers who will take the corporate crap, work six days a week and get paid for five, and mercilessly cut staff hours with the promise of bonuses if they improve the margin, are hard to find, and harder to keep. Most people have a conscience hidden ........somewhere. Sadly for me, now 8 months later W. O. has succeeded in their appeal to deny me unemployment compensation (managers lied at the hearing) and since I could not produce a witness to testify that I had NEVER said something, they won and I lose my only source of income, and means of paying child support. I don't expect to be put out on the street, I'm a survivor, but I'm sure there are some people out there curled up in sleeping bags who are outside for the same reasons, and children who aren't getting child support.. I would be interested in hearing from others in similar circumstances, perhaps there are enough cases to bring class-action litigation, or some type of civil action.
Any lawyers listening? I would love to introduce my friend Sue to Wild Oats.