Kristine Walkden, Centretown News
Herb and Spice Food Shop employees stock shelves and price products at the Bank Street location. Bank Street Herb and Spice employees have unionized after a landslide vote April 1. With 28 voters for a union and only four against, organizers are preparing to go to the bargaining table.
Both the employees at Herb and Spice Food Shop and Herb and Spice Wellness Shop, located across the street from the original store, will be a part of the union.
Employees have been quietly discussing unionizing at the food store location for years, says produce clerk Jonathan Becker.
“A union helps us get taken more seriously as a collective,” says Becker. “We didn’t decide to do this so we could all make more money. We want to have a stronger collective voice for job security and communication and accountability.”
He says unionizing would create an easier system for complaints, structured expectations for promotions and raises, and allow all of the employees to communicate more effectively.
Tina Barton, a cashier at the Herb and Spice food store who helped organize the union vote, says there wasn’t anything specific that pushed them to call a union representative.
“It just took one person to say, ‘we’ve been thinking about it and thinking about it and complaining about things we want to see changed, let’s move forward,’” Barton says.
The two locally-owned stores sell organic and local produce, groceries, and wellness supplies and works with other local businesses to provide alternative health and food options.
The Herb and Spice Food Shop has been a Centretown community staple for over 30 years and organizers looked to the community for union support.
A Facebook event created March 25 garnered 414 community members “attending” in support of the event.
Although there was not a physical event, the Facebook event asked community members in support of unionizing to write in to the owners or stop by the shop to tell employees they supported the cause.
Barton said the community greatly impacted the employees during tense times leading up to the vote.
“We had so much support from customers,” she said. “People on our Facebook group had seen the day of our vote so they were coming in and giving us lots of love and support.”
The shop unionized with United Food and Commercial Workers Canada—a Canadian private sector union. According to the union representative Farman Ali, bargaining should start by mid-April. Ali will be working with employees to negotiate the union terms in the coming month. He dispelled a myth Barton says organizers have been trying to combat—that the union could put the Herb and Spice out of business.
“You can never ask for anything that would put the employers in financial difficulty,” says Ali.
Barton says the atmosphere of the stores are already starting to change.
“I felt so proud to be there and so happy to serve customers and wanting to do a good job,” she says. “We’re going to put so much more into our jobs because we know how much we’re going to get out.”