After almost three years of negotiation, workers at New Seasons Market have a first union contract. Ratified in a member vote that ran Dec. 8-15, the three-year collective bargaining agreement will deliver big raises to about 850 workers at the 10 unionized New Seasons stores.
Founded in 1999 in Portland, New Seasons Market was sold to a private equity firm in 2014 and since 2020 has been a subsidiary of South Korean retail giant E-mart. New Seasons Labor Union began as a grassroots independent union in 2022, but still without a first contract nearly three years later, it affiliated this August with United Electrical Workers (UE), a 23,000-member union headquartered in Pittsburgh.
Under the newly ratified contract, grocery clerk wages will start at $19 an hour and rise every 1,040 hours until they reach $23.27 after the equivalent of 30 months of full-time work. That new scale amounts to an immediate raise of 6% to 16.5%, with most workers getting raises of 16.5%.
“For the many of us living with precarious financial situations because of our employer’s decision to underpay us, this will be a life changing raise,” said New Seasons Labor Union Co-Chair Ava Robins, a cheese clerk at the Concordia store.
The initial raise will be followed by raises of 2% in the second and third years of the contract.
Besides wages, healthcare had been a key sticking point that had long prevented agreement. New Seasons wanted to raise the number of hours part-time workers would have to work to become eligible for health insurance, and that was a nonstarter for the union. Ultimately, the company agreed to continue the status quo, in which workers are eligible for employer-provided health insurance if they work at least 24 hours a week.
The contract also provides:
- the option for cashiers to sit while they work
- just cause discipline, meaning discipline must follow due process and be proportional to the alleged misconduct
- humane scheduling provisions, including a ban on split shifts, a guarantee of a full 12 hours rest between shifts, two consecutive days off each week, and no more than five consecutive days of work except in blackout periods
The breakthrough in bargaining came after union members prepared for an all-out open-ended strike. After a resolution authorizing an open-ended strike passed Nov. 16 with 83% support, the union set a deadline of Dec. 4 for the company to respond, after which workers would prepare to strike Dec. 17, at the start of the busiest season for retail employees.
Workers had waged limited strikes several times before. Frustrated with alleged bad faith bargaining by New Seasons, workers shut 10 stores with a one-day strike on Labor Day 2024, and struck at 11 stores on Nov. 27, 2024, the day before Thanksgiving. They also struck for nine days at several stores this February to demand the reinstatement of a union officer who was fired. When they affiliated with UE, the national union assigned two full-time organizers and pledged up to $250,000 in strike and hardship funds.
With members preparing for an all-out strike, the company presented a greatly improved offer on Dec. 1. On Dec. 4, the two sides reached a tentative agreement which was unanimously supported by the bargaining team and then endorsed unanimously at an all-store member meeting later that night.
Before the strike vote, the two sides were pretty far from a deal, Robins told the Labor Press. Having access to a substantial strike fund signaled to the company that workers were ready to hold out, especially with the right to unemployment benefits for strikers starting Jan. 1 under a new Oregon law.
“The strike is the most powerful weapon that we can wield as workers,” Robins said. “That doesn’t mean that we were extremely enthusiastic about standing out in the cold through December.”
A New Seasons spokesperson failed to answer emailed questions despite a pledge to do so, but sent a statement saying the company is pleased with the ratification of the agreement. “The company is eager to begin its next chapter in partnership with the NSLU and looks forward to welcoming customers in the coming weeks as they prepare to celebrate their holiday traditions,” said the statement.
With a first contract ratified, the union ended its boycott of all New Seasons locations. The union is also holding officer elections now through Dec. 25.
The two staff organizers will shift their focus to organizing the 12 remaining non-union New Seasons Market locations.
“We set out three years ago to set new standards for our industry,” Robins said. “While I do think we’ve made significant changes, I’m not going to pretend that this contract is everything we wanted or everything New Seasons workers deserve. We didn’t have to spend a penny of our strike fund. I’m really thankful it will stay in our hands next round. If we could negotiate this kind of deal with 10 stores, I’m really excited to think what we could get with 20.”
The unionized stores
Portland
- Seven Corners (1954 SE Division St.)
- Slabtown (2170 NW Raleigh St.)
- Concordia (5320 NE 33rd Ave.)
- Grant Park (3210 NE Broadway St.)
- Arbor Lodge (6400 N Interstate Ave.)
- Williams (3445 N Williams Ave.)
- Sellwood (1214 SE Tacoma St.)
- University Park (6300 N Lombard St.)
- Hawthorne (4034 SE Hawthorne Blvd.)
Beaverton
- Cedar Hills (3495 SW Cedar Hills Blvd. )
