{"id":510844,"date":"2025-10-19T02:16:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T02:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/510844\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T02:16:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T02:16:13","slug":"dollar-store-workers-fight-to-improve-jobs-even-without-a-union","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/510844\/","title":{"rendered":"Dollar Store Workers Fight to Improve Jobs, Even Without a Union"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following is a crosspost from our good friends at Capital & Main. Subscribe to them here. Subscribe to them here <\/a><\/p>\n

When a Dollar General stocker<\/strong>\u00a0named David Williams saw two of his co-workers struggling to subdue a would-be shoplifter who was carrying a knife in 2019, the then-33-year-old kept his mouth shut. Later, when a co-worker asked him why he did nothing, Williams told him the truth.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018No offense, but I only get paid one time, and that is to be a stocker,\u2019\u201d said Williams, who today makes $11.50 an hour filling shelves with diapers, ramen and discount shampoo at a New Orleans store. Some months, he said, he can\u2019t make rent. \u201dSo, sorry, I\u2019m not about to put my life on the line,\u201d he told his colleague.<\/p>\n

What Williams needed, he thought, was a better job. He wasn\u2019t looking to unionize his workplace \u2014 a tall order in the right-to-work South. He just needed things to change.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 2022, Williams joined an organization that seemed, to him, like his best shot: Step Up Louisiana. Like several successful campaigns before it, Step Up organizes workers to improve their jobs, but stops short of calling for a union under the National Labor Relations Board. The approach, sometimes referred to as\u00a0\u201cpremajority unionism,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0is a natural fit for places like the South, with histories of\u00a0public hostility to unions<\/a>. Today, suggest experts, it may also be workers\u2019 best bet for building power amid the hostility of the Trump administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The United States<\/strong>\u00a0is home to\u00a020,700 Dollar Generals<\/a>,\u00a08,000 Family Dollars<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a09,000 Dollar Trees<\/a>. \u201cAnywhere there\u2019s a dollar store, from here to California to New York, the working conditions are the same, unfortunately,\u201d said Kenya Slaughter, a lead organizer with Step Up. Founded in 2017, the group \u2014 which has no official ties to any union \u2014 organizes grassroots members around economic justice issues in Louisiana and Tennessee. \u201cWe\u2019re not against unions,\u201d she said, but starting off with a demand for one, she explained, doesn\u2019t make sense given the dollar store model.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re all fighting for the same thing,\u201d said Williams. \u201cYou know you\u2019re sick and tired of how you\u2019re being treated.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Williams, like most workers in the dollar store campaign, complains of short-staffing; researchers say Dollar General employs an average of\u00a0eight employees per store<\/a>. Other complaints include constant turnover; low wages; crumbling and filthy stores; and security so poor that several workers have been\u00a0slain<\/a>\u00a0on the job.<\/p>\n

Dollar General did not answer questions about wages or its treatment of workers, but said in a statement, \u201cUltimately, we strive to create a work environment where employees have opportunities to grow their careers, serve their local communities and feel valued and heard.\u201d<\/p>\n

*\u00a0 \u00a0*\u00a0 \u00a0*<\/strong><\/p>\n

The traditional remedy<\/strong>\u00a0for workers like Williams has been to organize a union, including filing for an NLRB election, a process standardized in the 90-year-old\u00a0National Labor Relations Act<\/a>. But the act was not written with the\u00a015.6 million U.S. retail workers in mind<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe NLRB works best for single-site companies with one clear owner,\u201d said Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research and a senior lecturer at Cornell University.\u00a0<\/p>\n

While most dollar stores\u00a0have<\/a>\u00a0a single corporate owner, their workers are spread in tiny clusters across the country. Under U.S. labor law, each dollar store would have to unionize individually, or face the additional challenge of an election across multiple stores. Today, only\u00a04% of retail workers<\/a>\u00a0in the U.S. are unionized. That is even lower than the private sector average of\u00a0just under 6%<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"David Williams works at the DG Market in the Hollygrove neighborhood of New Orleans. DG Markets are Dollar General stores that carry fresh groceries.<\/p>\n

Even before the second Trump administration, Bronfenbrenner said, the National Labor Relations Board had\u00a0evolved over decades<\/a>\u00a0into an agency with little\u00a0enforcement power<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore we basically dismantled the regulatory state, which is what\u2019s happening now, the NLRB could force an election, but they can\u2019t force a contract because there\u2019s no penalty for employers who refuse to bargain other than a piece of paper saying, \u2018Go bargain.\u2019\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Employers have long\u00a0dragged out negotiations<\/a>\u00a0with impunity, with first contracts taking an average of\u00a0459 days<\/a>\u00a0to negotiate. Indeed, workers at Starbucks and Amazon won NLRB union elections in\u00a02021<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a02022<\/a>, respectively. They have yet to get a contract \u2014 and the improvements to their jobs one would bring.<\/p>\n

The NLRB\u2019s limitations are no secret to unions \u2014 even those successful in organizing under it. \u201cIf your campaign is relying on the National Labor Relations Act, you will not win because the employer knows how to defeat it,\u201d said Kurt Petersen, co-president of UNITE HERE Local 11. His\u00a032,000 member union<\/a>\u00a0has grown by strategically pressuring employers into agreeing to remain neutral during organizing drives and to recognize unions under\u00a0card check<\/a>. (Disclosure: UNITE HERE is a financial supporter of Capital & Main.)<\/p>\n

The National Labor Relations Board has become even more challenging for workers since Donald Trump reassumed office, said Bronfenbrenner. \u201cIt\u2019s totally dysfunctional,\u201d she said of the agency. It has effectively been paused since January, when Trump fired Biden appointee Gwynne Wilcox from the board. The move left it\u00a0without the quorum required\u00a0<\/a>to issue decisions. In the months since, at least one anti-union law firm has begun instructing clients to consider resuming\u00a0illegal captive-audience meetings<\/a>, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals\u00a0ruled<\/a>\u00a0that the NLRB\u2019s authority is unconstitutional, further eroding the agency\u2019s legal status.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Indeed, after\u00a0a surge in NLRB elections<\/a>\u00a0under President Joe Biden, the rate of workers unionizing appears to have plummeted since Trump reassumed office, according to National Labor Relations Board data\u00a0analyzed<\/a>\u00a0by Kevin Reuning, a political scientist at Miami University of Ohio.\u00a0In the first nine months of 2024,<\/a>\u00a080,434 workers formed new unions, according Reuning\u2019s site, Unionelections.org. During the same period a year later, only 47,085 workers had done so.<\/p>\n

\"\"Williams sits on the steps of his home in New Orleans.<\/p>\n

For Mckenzie Midgette, a four-year Dollar General veteran who now works full-time organizing dollar store workers in Tennessee, the situation is clear. The NLRB is not going to save dollar store workers. Instead, she said, \u201cWe need to learn how to [organize] ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

In New Orleans, Step Up\u2019s organizing yielded raises in local stores after about 18 months. After launching their campaign in\u00a0mid-2020<\/a>,\u00a0workers held rallies<\/a>, marched on Dollar General\u2019s\u00a0annual shareholder meeting<\/a>\u00a0and took their plight\u00a0to the media<\/a>. In 2023, Dollar Tree (which at the time owned Family Dollar)\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0national wage increases of up to 25%, raising wages by $2 an hour; Step Up says Louisiana Dollar Generals followed suit. The following year, Dollar General\u00a0approved a proposal<\/a>\u00a0that Williams made at a shareholder meeting that called for a\u00a0company-wide safety audit<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But there are limits to how much workers can achieve without a union, cautioned Bronfenbrenner. Without a contract guaranteeing basic work conditions and a voice for workers, every improvement can be taken away without notice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe goal of this whole thing is to change workers\u2019 lives, and that\u2019s done by having a union contract in the workplace.\u201d said Local 11\u2019s Petersen.<\/p>\n

*\u00a0 \u00a0*\u00a0 \u00a0*<\/strong><\/p>\n

Moving forward,<\/strong>\u00a0experts say workers are going to have to work outside of NLRB elections to improve their jobs. \u201cThat absolutely has to happen,\u201d said Bronfenbrenner. And in some places, it already is.<\/p>\n

In the Carolinas, Alabama and Georgia, another worker group called the Union of Southern Service Workers (backed by the Service Employees International Union) has been organizing retail workers (including dollar store workers), workers at low-paying restaurants like Waffle House, and home health care aides. After\u00a0demanding $25 an hour<\/a>\u00a0and safer working conditions, and staging walkouts, they saw success at Waffle House. Last June, the company announced a pay increase from\u00a0$2.13 an hour to $5.25 an hour by 2026<\/a>. (Disclosure: SEIU is a financial supporter of Capital & Main.)<\/p>\n

In New York City, app-based delivery workers, typically classified as independent contractors and therefore without\u00a0the right to organize an NLRB union,<\/a>\u00a0have also had success without calling for a union. In 2023,\u00a0two years of intense organizing<\/a>\u00a0by Los Deliveristas Unidos yielded a new city law mandating a\u00a0$21.44<\/a>\u00a0(as of 2025) minimum wage for app-based restaurant delivery workers. This year,\u00a0the law was expanded<\/a>\u00a0to include grocery app delivery workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

These nontraditional campaigns are only likely to become more appealing given the Trump administration\u2019s current posture, said Jennifer Abruzzo, general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board during the Biden administration.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWorkers are taking matters into their own hands,\u201d she said. \u201cThe board isn\u2019t functioning, and workers are educated about their rights and recognize their power. You\u2019re going to see unions and workers, even without unions, perhaps not filing charges with the NLRB, but taking up the issue themselves by ticketing or protesting or striking.\u201d<\/p>\n

Copyright 2025 Capital & Main.<\/p>\n

Photos by Fernando Lopez.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The following is a crosspost from our good friends at Capital & Main. Subscribe to them here. Subscribe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":510845,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3092],"tags":[51,897,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-510844","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jobs","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-jobs","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115398429378871536","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/510845"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}