How long have you worked at Whole Foods?

I've been working with Whole Foods for about eight years. When this August comes, it’ll be my ninth year.

When you started working at Whole Foods, what was your salary then, and what is your salary now?

When I first started working there, I think I started at $11.75 or $11.25. Once Amazon bought Whole Foods, they raised everybody to $15 an hour. That was in 2018. Since then, I’ve been working there, and oddly enough, I now make $20.24 an hour. It’s crazy because I’m just barely making it. 

Amazon bought Whole Foods for $13.7 billion in June 2017, their biggest acquisition at the time.  What changes did you notice happen after the acquisition?

There was this thing called gainsharing and it was a profit-sharing program. I work in produce and we had a certain variety of products to sell during the month and if we sold very well we would get commissions. You could see anything from $80 to $200. Amazon bought them, they got rid of that almost immediately. They used to give health care to part-time workers. They got rid of that. 

They started cutting labor. When I started working there, there were like, 70 people in the department. By the time the pandemic came around, it was like 50 people. And now there's maybe 30, 35. During the union campaign, they tried to hire people because they realized that, you know, you're squeezing us too tight.

Around the pandemic you [also] started to see a lot of micromanaging. They wanted us to be super minute with weird details and how to put things out and stuff that just was never there. It was a lot of busy work. When I first started there, you stacked apples, you cleaned up, and you went home. It was pretty simple.

Did y'all ever go to them and say, "Can we get these things back?" Was there any kind of conversation about reintroducing things that had been there before?

Whole Foods has this thing called a culture compass, and it's a weird corporate program they present as, "Oh, we're listening to the employees. We're trying to gauge your opinions and see your frustrations." People tell them every year, "Shit's fucked up. We want this. We want this. We shouldn't have gotten rid of that." Their whole thing was, "Yeah, we're listening." And, you know, they used to have these things called town halls, and we have a really weird pseudo-HR thing called TMS—Team Member Services.

Mase talked about his experience with TMS and how one person, who was supposed to be addressing his unfair treatment, was instead joking around with upper management.

This woman I'm assuming he's talking about used to be our store's TMS person. She left because, you know, they've also squeezed them tighter. There used to be an HR department store-to-store, but then it became TMS. Every store had a person. Then it was like every store within a region had a person. So they're having one guy do four to five stores in a general area.

They're screwing them over too, but, you know, they get paid a little more, so they drink the Kool-Aid. During these town halls—one time specifically—and this is when I realized that this woman was not on our side. And it's also unfortunate because this is, you know, probably a woman in her mid-40s, an older Black woman. This is what she said that made me go, "Oh, she's a nut"—she was like, "And, you know, y'all gotta understand that y'all have these team members who've been here for 20-something years." Mind you, she's been with the company for decades as well. She said, "These people have been here for 20-something years, and they take up a lot of y'all's labor budget. So we have to pay them more to keep the store afloat." And it's like—you're shitting on the team members who built this company to be what it was. Like, how are you saying, "Oh, it's their fault"?

At what point did you decide, "Oh yeah, this is some fucked-up shit. I need to come together with some colleagues"?

Honestly, after the pandemic, I was like, "Yeah, we need a fucking union," just from seeing how they operated. It was just insane. A lot of my good coworkers left right after it because we did a really small campaign, and it didn't really get anywhere.

Was this 2020? 2021?

It was during the height of the pandemic. We got maybe 40 people to sign a little thing, and then it just kind of... Everybody started quitting. So it didn't go anywhere. But with this most recent situation, one of my longtime coworkers and buddies came to me, maybe a year or two ago now. He was like, "Yo, Ed, there's some kid that just started working here that is talking about a union, and he's only been here for two weeks." And I'm like, "Oh, this kid's a nut." I was suspicious as fuck. I'm like, "All right, either he's a fucking plant from the company, and they're trying to suss people out, or he's, like..." So in organizing, there's a term called a “salt,” and unions will hire people specifically with the intent to organize a workplace. I'm like, "Okay, is he a salt? This is weird. Or is he just a weird-ass kid who wants to come in hot?" And I'm like, "I want to talk to him." That's how I met my homie, Ben. He was sincere and he was with the shit.

In our conversation with Mase, he was talking about his hours being cut and he said something about how you care as much as he cared. It hurt you as much as it hurt him. Organizing and unionizing are only possible if you have a fundamental care for your coworkers. There also has to be a level of trust and a level of respect. 

That's why I've been at Whole Foods for as long as I have. You talk to anybody that's worked there for a long time, and it's the people that keep people at Whole Foods. It's the people you sit with, the people you spend 40 hours a week with, working side by side. You're joking, you're struggling—you're doing all that together. You're going to build these connections. Folks like Mase and so many others—I work with a lot of younger Black folks in my store, and I see a lot of myself in them. I see bits of me in the past. And all these people just want to live a better life. They want to be able to get an apartment, go on vacation, do the things we’re told normal people should be able to do. So you spend that time, you get to know people, and you naturally start to care about them.

We have a tradition at the store of hanging out outside of work—we'll go to the bar, we'll get food. People make these connections. When you see people go through their day-to-day, when you see them struggle, you understand how real that struggle is. And when you experience struggle yourself, you're like, "Oh, well, shit, I don’t want to see people I care about go through something bad." Building that trust and those connections is vital. Whole Foods always felt like it was about community—the people you work with, the community you serve, how the community eats. And so much of that has been lost. But that natural sense of community among workers is what makes it such fertile ground for unions. We already sit together, hang out, and are cool. Why not help each other live a better life by forming a union?

You mentioned wanting to unionize a couple of years ago. What was your experience and knowledge of unions before that? Did you have family members in unions?

I wish I could say I knew more. My aunt is a librarian, so I have people in my family who are in unions. Unfortunately, we never really had those talks when I was a kid. But as I got older, I think a lot of people started to pay attention to unions. And also, just being Black—I mean, we are political beings. In 2015, 2016, I started asking questions. I was like, "All right, I voted for Obama twice, but where are we? What’s going on?" I volunteered in 2020 for the  Bernie Sanders campaign. I’ve done door-knocking for local campaigns and stuff like that. In the past few years It just became a natural answer. Like, duh, this is what we should be doing.

Trump fired an anti-Amazon NLRB member and gutted the NLRB. It’s easy for people to say, "Trump is making everything worse." But if you look at history, in 2021, under a Democratic president, the first Starbucks voted to unionize, and they still don’t have a contract. In 2022, the Amazon Labor Union in New York formed under another Democratic president, and they still don’t have a contract. How do you feel about the political nature of it? It’s easy to think it’s party against party, but, America at it’s core is an anti-union country. Union-busting is illegal, but what are the penalties? No one's bringing Jeff Bezos to court. The laws exist, but they don’t really check, and they don’t really balance.

I definitely agree that the two-party system is bullshit. There are also conversations to be had about liberalism and conservatism, and how neither provides real answers. You might find among liberals a bit more willingness to engage with unions, but that doesn’t mean they support them. They tolerate them. That’s how the Democratic Party is. They understand they wouldn’t exist without the FDR-era pro-union policies. But at the end of the day, they aren’t actively fighting for workers. It’s just politics

There was a labor party in the 60s but it quickly went away. Do you want to see a resurgence of it? Do you think that would help? 

That's kind of our only hope. We would at least need a Labor Party, some sort of social democratic change. Because otherwise where are we really heading right now? They talk about late-stage capitalism. They talk about imperial decline. We're experiencing all of that in real-time. I jokingly call what we're seeing now, "Technicolor Dream Fascism." We're seeing every variety.

The Amazon Labor Union started off grassroots and later decided to affiliate with a bigger union when they needed more manpower to continue their fight against Amazon. Was there ever a moment where you were like, "Damn, maybe we shouldn't affiliate with UFCW 1776. We can really do this ourselves"? Or was it always like, “If we want to succeed, we need their help”?

I kind of was the institutional guy from the jump. My buddy Ben, he was very much an independent guy.  After deliberating about it for some time, I think we both understood, if we're gonna have this fight, we need institutional backing.  And the UFCW, you can tell it's old school, you know? But I think especially with our local [chapter,] it's been really encouraging because they understand the times, and they at least understand, "Alright, we got to be doing things differently. We got to let these people run things, and we show up for support as an institution." 

Amazon was doing a lot of bribery and throwing a lot of propaganda bullshit at you all. You're very smart, but anyone could fall for the bullshit. How did you stay steadfast in your mission for Whole Foods employees to be unionized? 

I stayed that way because it was never really about me. I understood what my goals were. I understood what I was fighting for and why. I know enough to where I can stay grounded. I'm like, "I understand pay for play. I know you're running a game on me, so I'm not gonna fall for it." It is sad because a lot of the people that were anti-union, were people that I thought of when I started the union. Like, motherfuckers that can't afford a place of their own. I'm lucky to have, like, a nice apartment right now.  But I shouldn't have to be lucky, because if I'm not lucky, what am I doing? I'm rooming with, like, three or four other motherfuckers. It's one of those things where I see the bigger picture. It’s an American thing. It’s our culture. We’re taught to be very insular, very self-motivated, very self-interested. You thinking about other people is some simp shit or some goofy shit. So you don’t do it. But you see people willing to, shoot themselves in the foot for an immediate return, even if in the long term, it doesn’t pan out.

There were 297 employees, but 130 voted yes, 100 voted no. Were you surprised by the results? And also, where did everyone go?

They either fired or promoted upwards of about 30 people. I know at least 10 to 15 got fired, maybe 5 to 10 got promoted.

Did they ever give a reason for those people’s firing? Was it just ‘we’re doing layoffs,’ or whatever the excuse was?

So, they’re really insidious. They have a weird attendance system called UPT and it’s like a counter to keep you in line. It’s so absurd to me.

How does it work?

It’s insane. It’s like really diabolical behavior. If you hit zero on this counter, you’re pretty much fired, or you’re in danger of being fired, or you go negative. If you’re a part-timer, you start with 20 hours. So every time you call out, or say you’re late by 15 minutes, or you’re late from your break by a couple of minutes, it subtracts from that amount. Part-timers start with 20 hours, and once they hit zero or go under, it’s game over. If you’re full-time, you start with 30 hours. Same rules: Once you go under zero, it’s game over. The fucked-up part is that for every 30 hours you work, you accumulate one of these UPT  hours. So you technically have to work a couple of months just to be able to safely call out if you’re in a danger-zone situation. A lot of people before the campaign, and a lot of people now are negative, but they don’t audit the system the way they should. So what they did was take an opportunity to enforce it more effectively. Especially folks who are e-shoppers, who do the online orders—they’re the most disposable workers. They fired a bunch of people using that excuse. 

They have a policy called ‘no heroes.’ If you approach a customer with the intent to retrieve a stolen product, or if you try to harang them about something, you can get fired for that. So what they train you to do is give customer service. My homie Kay, he gave a guy who he saw put a bottle under his coat customer service. He said, “Hey man, you can go pay for that at this register.” The guy was like, “Alright, I got you,” and gave the bottle back, apologized, and left. They brought in all these union-busting leadership people, and this one guy goes up to him and says, “Hey, you can’t do that.” Kay’s like, “What do you mean? I gave him customer service. I did what y’all trained me to do.” The guy says, “Yeah, you can’t do it like that.’ So mind you, he walks away from Kay, and they never bring up the issue again. Once January 1st came around, after about a week, they just fired him outright, no reason. This kid had a perfect record. They just fired him, claiming he mishandled the situation. They were just trying to figure out any way to fire people. 

It’s been 12 hours since we talked to Mase and It’s been 9 days since the vote. Mase said y'all still hadn’t received the region-wide wage increase that Amazon/Whole Foods withheld during this election. Have y’all received the raise yet?

No, we have not. You know, we did get notice of an objection from Whole Foods in the final hour. They’re objecting to the results of the election. They claim we bribed people, which is hilarious because that’s literally what they did. They have money to bribe people like us. They know how much I get paid, right? It's insane. 

Y’all won the election, but getting a contract is the next battle and it’s a long process. Are you prepared for the fight ahead?

I’m ready. I started this knowing what the situation is. The good thing is we’re taking a lot of inspiration from Starbucks, and starting with an institution like the UFCW gives us the resources and capacity to make connections. We’re building that network. We’re not the only store organizing; we’re just the first to get there. Now it’s about building a pressure campaign and letting other stores know this is possible, helping them along the way. Yes, Amazon’s a big fight, and it will be long, but there are a lot more of us than them. Their legal team will have to ward off 20, 30, 40 elections, and at some point, they’ll have to buckle.

I appreciate the interview. It’s good to be having these conversations, and also be having them, with an understanding of what our political perspective is, especially as Black folks. Yeah we’ve been taught to idolize these wealthy people, but what does that really do for us? When we were the most dangerous is when we were talking about our identity mixed with a class analysis. They didn’t take Fred Hampton out for no reason. There’s nothing for Black people to gain by merely trying to have white adjacency in our current economic system.

The push for Black excellence just replicates whiteness. They don’t call y’all at Whole Foods Black excellence. They make it all about upward mobility and wealth and opulence. But to us, y’all are Black excellence. Black excellence is working together, looking at your coworkers and saying, "Let’s get together and make change."

Black labor is Black history, always remember that.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.