Taylor Almond was a newborn the first time she visited the office of Bakers Local 114. On March 22, at age 29, she was appointed the local’s top officer.
Local 114 represents nearly 1,100 workers at industrial-scale bakeries and grocery store bakery departments in Oregon. Almond has been part of the union family her whole life because her mom, Jan Almond, has been Local 114’s office manager for the last 38 years. Jan was on maternity leave when Local 114 members went on strike at Fred Meyer in 1994, but she brought Taylor to the office in a baby carrier and processed members’ strike benefit checks. Growing up, Almond remembers tagging along with her mom at awards dinners of the Northwest Oregon Labor Council. Now she’s a newly installed member of the council’s executive board.
Almond first came to work for Local 114 in 2017 as a part-time office assistant while she was at Portland State University studying psychology, social science, and philosophy. She earned a bachelor’s degree in 2020. In August 2021, she accepted an appointment as assistant business agent at Local 114, working with Alejandro Ahumada. When Ahumada left to work for the international union in the fall of 2021, Almond was appointed to his spot as business agent. At Local 114, that’s a full-time position and an elected post, and Almond was elected to it in November 2023.
Now she’s secretary-treasurer, replacing Darren Hamann, who’s retiring at age 50 thanks to an early start as a baker and the union pension fund’s “rule of 80” (in which you’re eligible for pension benefits when the sum of your age plus years of service equals 80 or more).
As secretary-treasurer, Almond is responsible for the well-being of hundreds of workers. Local 114 represents both wholesale and retail bakers. Its members bake the bread at Bimbo Bakery in Beaverton, Grand Central Baking in Northwest Portland, the Fred Meyer and Safeway bakeries in Clackamas, and Franz facilities in Portland and Springfield. They also decorate cakes and staff the bakery departments at 68 Safeway and Albertsons stores, 54 Fred Meyer stores, nine Roth’s, five QFCs, and the Rosauers Supermarket in Hood River. In addition, Local 114 represents workers at Spin Catering and a Sunrise Dental office in Washington.
Almond is also on the Oregon AFL-CIO Executive Board.
Almond said she hopes to grow Local 114 through organizing, which the 62,000-member international union — Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers, and Grain Millers — has established as a priority. But she’ll have her hands full in the coming months. She takes the helm in a year when most of the local’s contracts are up for renegotiation, including Franz, Fred Meyer, Kroger Clackamas, and Grand Central. As secretary-treasurer, she oversees a staff of three: business agent David Gettman, assistant office manager Thaila Nguyen … and her mom, office manager Jan Almond.
