Costco Gives Winning Response to Workers’ Union

Costco workers in Norfolk, Virginia, voted to improve working conditions at the wholesale retail chain in December by unionizing, and the response from Costo was surprising yet went down very well with workers, reports CNN.

The expected response in these situations tends to be fiery and aggressive, but Costco’s reflective and encouraging reply was a pleasant surprise.

According to the union, the group of 238 workers in Norfolk is planning to join 18,000 Teamsters at Costco across the nation. These workers highlighted that their hope of becoming Teamsters is to have their voices heard when asking for bonuses, higher wages, flexible working policies, pension contributions, as well as many other improvements in the workplace.

The Teamsters, which represent over a million workers in a range of industries across the nation, said in a statement that Costco organizers were seeking union representation for many different reasons, such as increasing job safety, getting a stronger voice in the workplace, and putting fairer grievance processes in place.

Costco’s former CEO Craig Jelinek and current CEO Ron Vachris came together on a memo response sent to employees last month. They said they were “not disappointed in our employees; we’re disappointed in ourselves as managers and leaders.”

They added, “The fact that a majority of Norfolk employees felt that they wanted or needed a union constitutes a failure on our part.”

The union says this is the first victory for Costco workers in two decades.

The Norfolk vote came a little over a year after the Teamsters confirmed a new national agreement with Costco. According to the union, this deal should “bring ‘significant wage improvements,’ higher bonuses, and an increase in employer contributions to union members’ pensions.”

Speaking to Business Insider, a manager in California said, “I agreed with that letter wholeheartedly because that means over 50% of those employees felt like they couldn’t go to management with issues, or they went to management and couldn’t get their issues resolved in a way they deemed fit.”