When Food Workers Rebel | Part 3 in a Series

Moderator’s Note: About a year ago, I posted an essay in which I
criticized Whole Foods Market (WFM) for its mistreatment of workers, anti-union
history, and ‘greenwashing’ of its actual ecological or carbon footprint. In
the post of September
4, 2012, I argued that:

From a structural violence and social equity vantage
point, there are plenty of good reasons to focus…on Whole Foods Market as an
oppressive and exploitative corporation…Here are my top three reasons that
Whole Foods Market is really just another capitalist corporation with more
interest in the bottom line than in the wellness of farmers and their
communities or even their own store workers and consumers: 1. Whole Foods has a
long history of being anti-union. 2. Whole Foods is against universal health
care. 3. Whole Foods now stocks conventional and even GMO (transgenic) products
and is failing to support the campaign for labeling of GE-foods.

There
are, of course, many other reasons to object to the labor-management,
supply-chain, food safety, and other political positions of this pseudo-green
titan of “New Age Capitalism” – WFM has opposed GMO labeling laws in California.

Now
a worker at WFM in Toronto, Canada has further exposed the injustices and
contradictions of this corporation in a passionate and revealing letter of
resignation that is circulating across the Internet. I am posting the letter in
the original unedited text as part of an ongoing series of reports and analyses
I am doing on “When Food Workers Rebel”.

The
original anonymous letter was first leaked in June to the Gawker
website, which maintains solid and insightful coverage of WFM including a
recent story about the firing of Latina/o employees in New Mexico for violating
the corporation’s “English-Only“
policy. Under pressure from New Mexicans who threatened a boycott, the company
revised the policy but still sees fit to try and control worker behavior and
social interactions in a manner reminiscent of the hated Social Department
created by Henry Ford to discipline and “Americanize” the large numbers of
immigrant workers on the automobile assembly lines at the old River Rouge
complex and other factories. I am disappointed that Latina/o consumers and
influential pundits and politicos only see fit to protest WFM over its
reactionary language policies when they should have joined the boycott given
the corporation’s horrendous record on workers, food safety, labeling, and
environmental sustainability.

“You are a
faux hippy Wal-Mart.”

WORKER’S RESIGNATION LETTER EXPOSES CORPORATE ABUSES AND
GREED AT WHOLE FOODS MARKET

Dear Whole Foods Market,

My
experience at Whole Foods was like an increasingly sped up fall down a really
long hill. That got rockier with every metre. And eventually, just really spiky
... With fire, acid and Nickleback music.

I
was hired about five or six years ago. I appreciated and respected what the
company said it’s philosophies were at that time. The ‘core values’
essentially. However, it didn’t take long to realize what complete and utter
bulls**t they are:

Oh,
you don’t recycle properly? (Caring about our communities and our environment)

Oh,
you throw out enough food to feed a lot of hungry university students. (Caring
about our communities and our environment)

Oh,
you’re asking me to put latex gloves on the sales floor so customers can throw
a pair out for every handful of gummy bears they take? (Caring about our
communities and our environment)

Oh,
you’ve installed massive television screens all over the store, sucking up
energy and polluting the environment with tacky advertisements. (Caring about
our communities and our environment, Supporting team member happiness and
excellence)

Oh,
you waste an absurd amount of energy, ink and paper in your offices for useless
bureaucratic nonsense. (Caring about our communities and our environment,
Supporting team member happiness and excellence)

Oh,
you just write off 10-20 per cent of the product that you buy for your bulk
department because the bins look nice. (Caring about our communities and our
environment)

Oh,
you sometimes intentionally order too much just to guarantee a full shelf,
knowing full well the product will most likely be thrown out? (Caring about our
communities and our environment)

Oh,
you don’t actually audit or evaluate each product you sell? (Caring about our
communities and our environment, We sell the highest quality natural and
organic products available)

Oh,
you force team members to come in to work, on their day off, once a month, at
7am in the morning, knowing a lot of them live an hour away and the TTC isn’t
completely running that early in the morning and then force feed them useless updates
on the company and embarrassingly artificial pep talks ([Redacted] once
compared Whole Foods Market to religion... had to throw that in there. That was
definitely a ‘Did she really just say that moment’.)? (Supporting team member
happiness and excellence, Caring about our communities and our environment)

Oh,
you buy poorly made, ugly t-shirts for your employees that will just be thrown
in the trash and pretend they’re gifts when they’re really just advertising
tools? (Supporting team member happiness and excellence, Caring about our
communities and our environment)

Oh,
the food here is really quite awful on average? Almost everything that prepared
foods makes is terrible. The pizza used to be pretty good but the slices have
shrunk, the toppings are sparser and it’s usually extremely overcooked. The
sandwiches are the stuff of nightmares. (It’s amazing what advertising can make
people think. It can even trick their senses.) (We sell the highest quality
natural and organic products available)

Oh,
you let some customers abuse your employees and then actually reward the
customers for their behaviour and then trample on the integrity and honour of
your abused employees? (Supporting team member happiness and excellence)

Oh,
you practice discrimination by offering ‘healthier’ employees better discounts?
And you think having different rules for new smoker employees versus old smoker
employees is a good idea? (Supporting team member happiness and excellence)

Oh,
you purchase products from Israel (Or any distant country) if they’re slightly
cheaper than local alternatives? (Caring about our communities and our
environment)

Chain:
Whole Foods Market has more than 300 stores across the U.S., Canada and the UK,
including this one in Manhattan, New York

Oh,
you’ve somehow created the worst computer program I’ve ever used to run your
entire buying system? IRMA is some Windows 95 era stuff, guys. I could design a
significantly better interface in 30 minutes on a pad of paper. I know several
students who could create a superior program in their spare time. Was someone
actually hired to create that thing? Was it the Realplayer dudes? Even Captain
Picard couldn’t facepalm hard enough to express the amount of failure in
that... that, thing... (Supporting team member happiness and excellence)

Oh,
you push employees into greater responsibilities without compensation? Often
having them essentially do all the work of a higher position without the pay?
(Supporting team member happiness and excellence)

Oh,
you ambush employee’s [sic] using two managers when you want to write someone
up? No warning. No representation. All reasons and excuses fall on deaf ears.
(Supporting team member happiness and excellence)

Oh,
you’d rather attempt to create some sort of fake ‘culture’ with signs and
forced meeting than let it happen naturally by letting employees socialize
lightly as they work? (Supporting team member happiness and excellence)

Oh,
you like to manage ‘systems’ instead of people? You don’t hold critical
thinking and discretion in high regard? You encourage blindly following rules?
I.e., no recourse in challenging write ups. Employees given cold shoulder when
they attempt anything like this. (Supporting team member happiness and
excellence)

Oh,
you want us to politely call and let you know if we’ll be late... but you’ll
still write us up when we arrive? Kind of a d**k move, guys. (Supporting team
member happiness and excellence)

Oh,
you actually think being 20 minutes late matters? You know Whole Foods Market
is just a grocery store, right? (Supporting team member happiness and
excellence)

Oh,
you don’t believe inflation exists? Cost of living raises aren’t given here?
(Supporting team member happiness and excellence)

I
notice a trend... Honestly, I could go on and on and fill out the details but
since most people will just dismiss this email I should probably not put too
much effort into it. I should have kept a blog…

Now
the employees have lost a lot of their former power and the store is being
sucked into some centralized monster. Quality is being thrown out in favour of
the people at the top having to do a little less work.

Competition
is being destroyed and you’re not even pushing that many healthy products.
Every second endcap is potato chips or pop or some sort of salt filled snack
(Promoting the health of our stakeholders through healthy eating education). A
lot of the stuff in Whole Body doesn’t even work or has absolutely no credible
evidence to back any claims up. You’re kind a faux hippy Wal-Mart now. Great.
Job.

Rick Watts, 49, protests
outside a Whole Foods store in West Hollywood, Calif. (2009). The
protest took place after John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods Market,
wrote an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal about health care
reform. | AP Photo/Jae C. Hong