College Park, MD – United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 400 Union announced workers at the MOM’s Organic Market in College Park, Md. have resoundingly voted down an effort to decertify the union at the store.
The attempt to oust the union was backed by the National Right to Work Committee, an anti-union organization based in Northern Virginia. Workers resoundingly rejected the effort and voted 22–9 in favor of remaining unionized with UFCW Local 400.
“We know MOM’s can be a better place to work and the best way to make that happen is to stand together and collectively demand the change we need. We were committed to seeing this through when we formed our union and we remain committed today,” said Laura Jackson, who goes by LJ and has worked at MOM’s in College Park for two and a half years. “We weren’t going to let some outside anti-union group pressure us into giving up our rights and going back to where we started.”
Workers at the store voted to unionize two years ago and have been negotiating their first union contract ever since.
“We have already made so much progress toward settling our first union contract and we are so close to the finish line,” said LJ, who also serves on the union’s bargaining committee. “As a union, we’re fighting for better pay, guaranteed raises, higher pay for bilingual workers, and more. That’s why we won the vote. Because we’re standing together as workers for what we deserve. Now that this unnecessary distraction is behind us, we can get back to finalizing a contract that provides MOM’s workers with our fair share of the profits of our hard work and reflects the progressive values that MOM’s claims to support.”