Natural Grocers closes East Side store in a move workers say is retaliation for Tucson union drive

A Natural Grocers store on Tucson’s East Side is closing Wednesday, with the national chain citing an expired lease and workers claiming illegal retaliation after a union drive this summer.

The organic food retailer announced last week it is closing a location at Broadway and Kolb Road. The move comes after an attempt to unionize the store in July, raising allegations that the closure was retaliatory.

Some pro-union workers were fired during the attempt to form a union, which narrowly lost in an election. The terminated workers’ votes would have resulted in a success for organizers.

“The day they fired me, they broke the law,” one worker told the Sentinel.

The national chain denied any retaliation.

United Food and Commercial Workers, the union which would have represented workers at the store, filed an unfair labor practice charge against Natural Grocers on Dec. 5. The union claims the store’s closure is a direct response to union activity, which would be a violation of federal law. The UFCW also claims the company required laid-off employees to sign confidentiality agreements in exchange for severance packages.

The company said the store is being closed in part because the lease has expired.

“We made the strategic decision to close the Broadway and Kolb store to enhance operating efficiencies and store performance across the Tucson market,” company Co-President Kemper Isely said in a press release. “This decision was reached after careful consideration of the store’s operational challenges impacting performance, saturation in the Tucson area, and capital improvements required for this location in the near future.”

William Gamble, a Natural Grocers employee for 10 years and a union supporter, was fired on June 16, the day after he notified the company of the workers’ intent to unionize.

This summer, employees at the East Side location voted 7-5 against unionization, though there are four additional contested ballots from workers who alleged unlawful termination due to their vocal union support. Employees of the store during the pay period ending June 23 were eligible to cast ballots, National Labor Relations Board Press Secretary Kayla Blado told the Sentinel in an email.

Since the number of challenged ballots could change the outcome of the election, the NLRB’s Arizona regional director will determine whether to open and count them. He will also decide if a hearing is needed to review the objections. If any objections are upheld, a new election may be ordered, Blado said.

Gamble was the first of four employees fired in the weeks leading up to the election. Gamble said he and his other former colleagues “were the four most vocal people about the union.”

Under the National Labor Relations Act, firing, demoting, or otherwise retaliating against an employee for union organizing is against federal law, though Arizona is an at-will employment state, which means a worker can otherwise be fired at any time for any lawful reason.

Gamble’s termination notice reads that he was fired for violating Natural Grocers’ conduct and anti-violence policies by isolating a female employee and making her feel “uncomfortable and intimidated,” though it does not go into detail about what transpired between the two.

Gamble denied the allegations.

“I was always the one who stood up for the girls that were being harassed and our trans employees who were being harassed,” he said.

Gamble alleged that during his time at the store, management declined to accommodate elderly employees and pregnant women, refused to call a transgender employee by their correct pronouns, made a discriminatory remark about a Black employee’s hair, and continued to employ a manager with numerous accusations of sexual misconduct from female employees.

In his decade with the company, Gamble worked at three different locations in Flagstaff and Tucson and “never had a single disciplinary infraction,” he said.

“I had always planned to stay with Natural Grocers. I was passionate about them. I believed in their mission. I believed in the company,” Gamble said. “So that was really heartbreaking.”

Natural Grocers, a Colorado-based new-age health food chain that promises to deliver exclusively organic produce, brands itself as a friendly, bohemian neighborhood grocery store that cares “deeply about the health and well-being of our neighbors, our family, friends, community and planet.”

After losing his job, Gamble — who now works as assistant field director for the AFL-CIO — said he and his wife were “barely” able to keep the house they share with their two children.

“Financially, it was incredibly difficult for us,” he remembered. “We were already living paycheck to paycheck.”

A former coworker of Gamble’s told the Sentinel they believed Gamble’s firing was “a blatant move against the union.”

“I knew it was a lie as soon as I heard it,” they said. “William is the farthest thing from anybody who would be harassing.”

The ex-employee asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation from the company.

The second employee was fired several weeks after Gamble for a violation of company policy and said there is “no doubt” in their mind that their own firing was in response to their vocal support for the union effort.

“I was an exemplary employee, and I rose to the top of the pack early on. Every review I had was ‘exceeds expectations,’” they said. “The day they fired me, they broke the law.”

Both former employees told the Sentinel they chose to seek union representation after witnessing “bullying” and “discrimination” from management on the basis of race, sex, age and disability at the store.

In a statement to the Sentinel, Natural Grocers spokesperson Katie Macarelli denied allegations of union-busting and retaliatory firing.

“Natural Grocers treated all crew at this store with the utmost respect, without favoritism and without regard to their position on this issue,” Macarelli said in an email.

“Employees at Natural Grocers’ Broadway and Kolb store in Tucson previously voted to reject unionization after a free and fair election. Natural Grocers encourages its crew to fully understand a prominent issue from all sides, like the formation of a union, and is respectful of employee choice made after consideration of all potential benefits, risks, and alternatives. To suggest that Natural Grocers engaged in ‘union busting’ is entirely misplaced,” she wrote.

Macarelli rejected claims that the store was closed as a retaliatory measure.

“The company regularly evaluates the performance and sustainability of its stores. The suggestion that Natural Grocers made this decision based on any anti-union bias or animus could not be further from the truth and we unequivocally deny this assertion,” she said in an email.

Macarelli did not comment on the confidentiality agreements reportedly given to employees in exchange for separation pay, but said any severance offers to employees were “subject to standard terms and conditions offered to employees impacted by similar decisions in the past at Natural Grocers.”

After Gamble was fired, Natural Grocers hired labor relations consultant Miko Penn of the Crossroads Labor Relations Group at a rate of $450 an hour to “provide presentations, prepare written materials, and conduct meetings” on the effects of union representation for employees at the Tucson store, according to filings with the U.S. Department of Labor.

Jamal White, an employee at the store, said captive audience meetings began at the store after the unionization efforts went public before the election this summer.

“The vibe kind of changed in that we saw a different side of a company that, when you first come in, tells you that community is important and their crew is important. But then after we went public with that, we saw there was definitely a change,” White said.

Captive audience meetings, where employers compel workers to listen to anti-union messages on the clock, became illegal as of Nov. 13.

Natural Grocers enlisted the services of the Crossroads Group twice previously — once in 2022 and again in February of this year — to hold anti-union meetings at its stores in Oklahoma.

Workers at the Natural Grocers location in Norman, Okla. began organizing after the pandemic. Employees there also contend that pro-union workers were unjustly fired or coerced into quitting, and remaining staff were held in captive audience meetings while workers “from corporate” worked the sales floor.

In May, the Norman store voted 11-9 in favor of union representation.

“Something I’ve said often is that we need checks and balances. We need a third party,” said Bridget Burns, who has worked at the Natural Grocers in Norman, Okla. for more than nine years and voted in favor of the union. “They have a third party verification for their organic certification and for their pasture raised certification for all of the meat and all of the produce. So why should workers’ rights be any different? Why are they above reproach when it comes to workers’ rights, but not when it comes to the health of our food?”

Other national chains have been accused by the NLRB in recent years of closing stores as a means of retaliating against union activity.

Last year, the NLRB accused Starbucks of closing 23 stores in an attempt to suppress union activity. This September, a judge ruled that the chain had illegally closed two unionized locations in Ithaca, N.Y., in an act of retaliation that violated federal labor law.

Workers at the Trader Joe’s wine shop in Manhattan were preparing to file for a union election in 2022 when the grocery chain abruptly shuttered the store, employees told Gothamist, a move the NLRB deemed illegal retaliation this year.

With the store at Broadway and Kolb closing Wednesday, Natural Grocers will have three remaining locations in the Tucson area and 167 across 20 other states west of the Mississippi.