Update Tuesday, 11:35 a.m. ET
One day after workers at its Burlington, Vermont, store filed paperwork to form a union, Ben & Jerry’s PR director Sean Greenwood provided the following statement to Fast Company, indicating that the ice cream brand would not stand in the workers’ way as other progressive companies have done in the past year.
Ben & Jerry’s and the workers in our downtown Burlington Scoop Shop share the goal of advancing justice, both inside and outside our company. For almost 45 years, we’ve sought to center the principles of justice and equity at the heart of our business model. That’s why we recognize and support the rights of all workers to unionize and collectively bargain. Ben & Jerry’s is committed to the goal of operating our company in a way that is fair, inclusive, and equitable, while being a dynamic and fun place for all workers. We welcome the steps taken by the workers at our company-owned Scoop Shop in our hometown of Burlington, VT.
Original story:
Workers at Ben & Jerry’s flagship scoop shop in Burlington, Vermont, have filed paperwork to form a union, saying the store’s staff unanimously supports the move. If successful, it would mark the progressive ice-cream brand’s first-ever unionized store, coming months into a labor movement that’s exposed the hypocrisies of fellow progressive employers, such as Starbucks, REI, and Trader Joe’s.
“We are taught from the beginning of our employment that equality and justice are integral rights of ours as people,” says their letter, which is addressed to Ben & Jerry’s ex-hippie cofounders, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield. “But what happens when Vermont’s Finest are continually left out of these conversations?”
These scoopers, as the workers are known, say they are frustrated by pay, what’s being asked of them, and other workplace issues, yet feel like they have no voice. “The act of forming a union is one that comes from a place of sustainability and preservation,” they write. “Let’s find a Ben & Jerry’s model that serves all.”
Organizers say the union push marks an opportunity for the brand to walk its decades-long talk. The Burlington location employs 37 scoopers, all of whom organizers say are backing the union. Unanimous support in these situations is historically rare; for a workplace to qualify for a vote, all the government requires is signatures from 30% of the employees. Their union-in-the-making is called Scoopers United, and they have secured the expert assistance of Workers United in Vermont and Upstate New York.
Last year, Workers United helped ignite the 2022 Starbucks union drive, what labor experts like Kate Bronfenbrenner, from Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations, has told me was “brilliant” and one of the most effective in recent history. (The group just notched its 300th union victory on Monday.)
Scoopers in Vermont say their union push began in earnest three weeks ago, around April 3—Free Cone Day, a much-hyped event where customers can receive a free ice cream cone. Thanks partly to COVID-19, Free Cone Day has been on hiatus since 2019. Union organizers told the Washington Post that during its triumphant return this year, their tip jar disappeared from the counter. It rematerialized after protests, they add, but it wasn’t long afterward that all 37 workers had pledged to support forming a union.
When the union wave swept through Starbucks cafés last year, the coffee giant got to work torching its progressive reputation by waging what experts have said marks one of America’s most aggressive anti-union campaigns. To wit, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has since identified 513 unfair labor practices against the company; last month a judge argued its attempts to thwart the union drive amounted to “egregious and widespread misconduct”; and the actions recently put Howard Schultz in the hot seat before Congress.
But Ben & Jerry’s cofounders Cohen and Greenfield have anchored their brand to a socially conscious purpose more than Starbucks has, and more than most other U.S. business owners have. Written way back in 1988, their mission statement declares that Ben & Jerry’s will promote a “new corporate concept of linked prosperity” that is built on “deep respect for individuals inside and outside the company and for the communities of which they are a part.”
Ben & Jerry’s hallmark “caring capitalism” has since day one included donating 7.5% of profits to charity, as well as giving employees stock options at a 15% discount. Their separate nonprofit arm, the Ben & Jerry’s Foundation, has donated $50 million since 1985 to organizations that work for progressive social change, including, in recent years, hundreds of thousands of dollars to coalitions that themselves support unions.
Its flavors really tell all you need to know: “Hubby Hubby” after Vermont legalized same-sex marriage in 2009; “Rainforest Crunch,” which supported Brazilian farmer cooperatives; “Save Our Swirled”; and “Bernie’s Yearning” just in time for the 2016 election—mint ice cream topped with a thin chocolate cap, representing 1% of the pint.
Ben & Jerry’s did not respond to Fast Company‘s question about whether it plans to welcome the union campaign.
It’s not the first time the company has faced the question, however. Back in 1999, about a dozen Ben & Jerry’s maintenance workers at a Vermont plant voted to unionize, turning them into the first unionized employees in company history.
Officially, Ben & Jerry’s opposed the idea, using a popular progressive employer counterargument: A union is unnecessary because employees already enjoy above-average benefits. In Ben & Jerry’s case, this meant paid family leave, health club memberships, and three pints of free ice cream per day.
The company’s lawyers also argued that it didn’t make sense for one small group to form its own tiny bargaining unit, since Ben & Jerry’s prided itself on having a democratic workplace and everybody deserved an equal shot at union representation.
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