Supermarkets for Trade Unionists
Three arguments for unions worried about support public grocery
AFGE
I’m a proud member of two unions, the National Writers Union and the Texas AFT, affiliated to the American Federation of Teachers. So when I hear that some union leaders don’t think public grocery stores are a good idea, my heart sinks. Luckily, I’m a writer and a teacher, so here’s me doing my unionised work in defence of public grocery.
Union members aren’t losing jobs to public grocers, they’re losing them to Walmart self-checkout, Amazon Go, Dollar General expansion into food deserts, and private equity rollups that gut union contracts post-acquisition. Kroger-Albertsons, the spaces in which unions are already fighting for recognition, are the enemy - not those who’d want a public option.
Think of grocery like education. Public universities didn’t kill private ones: a public option raised standards. Public groceries with good wages, benefits, and union jobs should become a benchmark. It’s harder for Loblaws or Kroger to race to the bottom when there’s a public comparator showing what decent employment looks like. Unions should want that wage anchor in every market.
Public groceries don’t replace existing stores—public options go where capital has already abandoned: zones of food apartheid, rural towns after the last Safeway closed, neighborhoods where the only option is a Dollar Tree. These are new unionized positions in places where there’s currently nothing to organize. Union membership rolls can only grow, they don’t shrink.
There are plenty of forces ranged against the big bets for democratic supply chain transformation - unions shouldn’t be among them.