A Logan Square grocery co-op illegally fired two workers and disciplined others who participated in walkouts at the store, a National Labor Relations Board judge ruled Thursday.
The Dill Pickle Food Co-op must offer reinstatement to the two workers it fired, administrative law Judge Arthur Amchan ruled. It must also pay them for any loss of earnings that resulted from their firings.
The Dill Pickle, at 2746 N. Milwaukee Ave., must cease and desist from “discharging or otherwise discriminating against employees for engaging in protected concerted activity,” Amchan ordered.
The ruling comes after workers filed unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB last year. The case was tried during a three-day hearing in the NLRB’s Chicago offices in January.
The Dill Pickle can appeal the ruling. General manager I’Talia McCarthy said any decision about whether to appeal the ruling would have to be discussed with the Dill Pickle board and the co-op’s attorney. McCarthy said the co-op would not issue a statement about the decision before it met with union stewards early next week.
Kanaan Rogers, 21, was one of the two co-op staff members Amchan ruled was fired illegally by the Dill Pickle last spring. Rogers worked as a facilities assistant at the store, cleaning, stocking shelves and sometimes working at the cash register.
At the time, he told the Tribune, he was living in Logan Square with his mom and other family members, supporting the family with rent. Losing his job was a financial hardship. “I used up all my savings,” he said.
Some Dill Pickle employees participated in walkouts in December 2021 and January 2022 over concerns about COVID-19 exposures, crowding in the store that made social distancing difficult and in one case because they believed another employee had been unfairly disciplined.
Amchan found that Rogers was illegally fired in April 2022 in part because of his participation in one of the walkouts.
“They just didn’t like the union,” Rogers said. Workers didn’t want to walk off the job, he said, but felt that was the only way they could change things about their working conditions.
“That’s what we had to do, to get a reaction, or get some type of change,” he said. “We had to walk out.”
At the time the unfair labor practice charges were filed, Dill Pickle workers were unionized with the Industrial Workers of the World, with whom they had first voted to unionize in 2017. In December, the co-op staff voted to end its affiliation with the IWW and form its own union, the Dill Pickle Food Co-op Workers Union.
“The (unfair labor practice charges) were filed by our old bargaining union, the IWW, which is no longer our union. They were voted out by our current staff right now,” McCarthy said. “Management and our new union are actively working with one another right now to try and mitigate some of the issues that we have had in the past, and it’s been a very good relationship thus far.”
Amchan ruled that in addition to Rogers, the Dill Pickle illegally terminated produce clerk Aoife Sweeney, who was fired after being unfairly accused by Dill Pickle management of theft and of purposely vandalizing products in order to take them home, Amchan wrote. Sweeney was also a union steward.
“Due to its animus towards Sweeney’s protected activity, it seized upon every ambiguity in its video footage and sales records to accuse Sweeney of theft and vandalism,” Amchan wrote in the decision.
In one case, for instance, management accused Sweeney of taking hand soap from the store. Sweeney said they had brought the soap to the produce office for workers to use to wash their hands, a statement supported by surveillance video, Amchan wrote.
Amchan ruled that other employees who had participated in walkouts were illegally disciplined.
One of those employees was Jessico Dickerson, who has worked at the Dill Pickle since 2013. Dickerson currently works for the co-op part time in social media and marketing.
“It does appear that those workers’ rights and my rights were infringed upon,” Dickerson said.
“I think it’s a little too late,” they said of the remedies ordered by the labor board judge. “A lot of people have moved on, and the damage has been done. The way that people were let go was unreasonable and unjust.”
The Dill Pickle also violated labor law by failing to bargain with the union over the temporary closure of the store parking lot during inclement weather in February 2022 and by failing to provide information in the form of time sheets to the workers’ union, Amchan ruled.
