The Scarcity of Abundance: Living Wage Campaign Started at Local, Cooperative Grocery Store

On April 10, 2010, former workers, shareholders, customers, and concerned community members walked through the front doors of Abundance Cooperative Market, on one of their busiest days of the month, to celebrate workers and initiate a living wage campaign. Cake, balloons, party hats, noise makers, signs, a giant novelty check with Rochester's living wage rate written on it, and a living wage resolution for people to sign to be submitted to the board of directors, were used to create the celebratory atmosphere of the action.

“We decided to come out and make a splash—to say this isn't ok. We want to see our workers get a living wage. The store has nearly $300,000.00 to distribute to the shareholders. [Instead of distributing that money to shareholders] it could take that money and put it back into the people that actually make the store work on a daily basis,” said Ted Forsyth, a former employee and current shareholder of Abundance.

This year was the first year that Abundance had ever given shareholder dividends since it opened nine years ago. After making a profit of $292,170.00—according to the annual reports for 2007-2008 and 2008-2009—over the course of the last three years, the board decided to give away a percentage of the surplus to shareholders to avoid paying taxes.

In an email sent out on Monday, February 22, to the Abundance Shareholder email listserv, Abundance Board President Melissa Marquez wrote, “Dividends were declared in part for the tax benefit to the co-op since 2009 was the first time ever that we actually had to pay income taxes since we had so many losses from prior years that we had not had to pay taxes before. If we had not declared dividends, we would have then paid more in taxes and we preferred that the shareholders who have shopped at Abundance benefit from their patronage of the store.”

Some might ask, why the fuss?

“When I moved back to Rochester in 2006, I was inspired by the concept of a cooperative venture in my hometown. I had a deep desire to work in a place that valued workers, not only in terms of wages and benefits, but also in terms of worker input and control over the decisions made in the store on a daily basis. I wanted to work in a liberating environment. When I read the mission, the cooperative principles, and thought about work place democracy and anti-hierarchical structures, I was hooked,” said Forsyth.

Abundance is a consumer cooperative grocery store. This means it is, “…a cooperative business owned by its customers for their mutual benefit. It is a form of free enterprise that is oriented toward service rather than pecuniary profit,” according to Wikipedia. This is different from a worker-owned cooperative grocery store. A worker coop is owned and democratically controlled by its worker-owners.

Obviously, both of these models can have identity crises. Suppose a consumer coop hires members to work at it and those members, being in an boss/worker relationship, start to see how undervalued they are through their lack of pay, benefits, and involvement in store decision-making process. They might be interested in radically transforming how the day to day work of the store gets done. Or, consider a worker-owned coop that isn't doing well financially. The workers decide to allow customers to become members by paying a fee—thereby raising the necessary capital to remain open. But, then those same new members start demanding new policies that go against the values of work place democracy and worker control, which were primary reasons for the store to open in the first place. My point being that things are not always concrete nor can they always be easily categorized.

To become a member at Abundance, you have to pay a one-time fee of $100. This gives you formal voice in the coop with all the rights and responsibilities that go with it. Membership also grants you the ability to vote on resolutions and elect board members. Section 5.8 of the Abundance bylaws grant shareholders a certain amount of democratic power through the owner resolution process. There are also minor discounts and other services made available.

However, this style of membership does exclude people. For one, the board doesn't have a non-manager employee liaison to talk about working conditions even though it does include the general manager of the store—a non-voting member of the board—who gives an economic assessment of how the store is doing, among other things. The $100 fee is also pretty steep as many people cannot afford it. Workers—people who operate the store—are not made formal members—unless you pay. Instead, there is a soft agreement that workers who are not members are welcome to attend board meetings and annual meetings, even though these events generally take place during working hours. Employees outside of the manager circle are rarely included in forming and/or implementing decisions that directly affect their jobs. It also leads to power imbalances based on the structure of the store.

Abundance is structured as a hierarchy: the shareholders elect the board of directors; the board of directors select and hire the general manager who acts as a liaison between the board and the store; the general manager has the power to hire and fire anyone on staff—other managers and employees; some members of the management team are department managers who get to hire and fire employees—with the approval of the general manager—which puts, currently, 15 workers out of 26 making $7.25 up to $8.00 in a position of little power over the conditions in which they work with no formal way to complain or demand change. (Sometime around 2006-2007, the formal grievance committee for employees at Abundance was dismantled.)

Abundance imagines itself as a “community center” that educates people about their food choices and operates in ways that “support a sustainable food system, sound ecological practices, responsible corporate practices, and just employment procedures,” according to the mission of the store. Similar ideas are expressed in the Cooperative Principles written in Rochdale, England in the 1840s and amended in 1995 by the Assembly of the International Cooperative Alliance, which Abundance appears to have signed onto via shareholder and employee materials it distributes.

It seems hypocritical to use terms like “sustainable”, “self-responsible”, “socially responsible”, “honest”, “open”, “just employment procedures” and “care for others” publicly, while at the same time, not putting worker need before tax incentives.

“We have great, high-spirited, positive, outgoing people who work here and I felt like I was really welcomed as a worker and I loved all the people who shopped here. I think that to create the positive, sustainable environment and community we need here in Rochester, we need a living wage and I think that Abundance is the number one place to start it and make sure [the store] uphold[s] what they believe in,” said Chelsea Cook, a former employee.

In fact, shareholders chimed in on this very issue at a meeting held in the summer of 2008. The first bullet point of a report back published in the Rutabaga Rap in the 2008 June/July edition was, “Paying store workers enough to support a family.”

It's not just shareholders of Abundance that support living wages though. The City of Rochester implemented a living wage ordinance in 2001 that was unanimously passed by the City Council with support from the Mayor.

“It set minimum wage rates for employees of companies entering into contracts for services with the City of Rochester. It applies to contracts in excess of $50,000. The basis for the initial wage rates was the Federal Poverty Guideline- the wage was set so that a full-time employee with a family of four would not earn below the poverty level,” according to the city's web page on the history of the living wage ordinance.

The wage rates, which are good through June 30, 2010, are adjusted annually to keep up with inflation. Currently, in 2010, this hourly rate is set at $10.54 for employees offered health insurance benefits and $11.77 for those not offered these benefits. The symbolism of the $11.77—supporting a family above the Federal poverty line—was used for the amount written on the novelty check brought into Abundance. The city passed this ordinance, “as a local first step to encourage employers to pay living wages in this community,” according to the city website.

In order for workers to be “sustainable”, “self-responsible”, “socially responsible”, and “care for others”, they require the economic means to put those values and principles, presumed to be adhered to, into practice. Word from workers was that General Manager Jim DeLuca turned the language of living wages into that of competitive wages and told minimum-wage and nearly minimum-wage workers that he'd looked into the possibility of living wages and found, that compared regionally, the employees at Abundance were on par with what other employees, in the same positions, were making at other coops.

However, with a few, quick emails, it was determined that Buffalo's Lexington Co-op starts cashiers at $7.50, which might be higher depending on experience and gives a first review and raise at three months employment with reviews and raises annually and Green Star Market in Ithaca, NY that starts its cashiers out at $10.40—a living wage. Both Lexington and Green Star, like Abundance, are members of the National Cooperative Grocers Association.

In the very beginning, it wasn't like this.

“When we first started talking about having a coop, one of the primary things that we were concerned about were workers' rights. We felt that workers usually finished last in ventures like this and we wanted to have a different approach. We wanted to have a living wage and we wanted to have benefits for all the workers. In our very first budget we did have exactly that,” said Pat Mannix, Abundance's first board president and a founding member.

When it came to a financial rock and hard place for the coop after that first year, according to Mannix, the board appealed to the workers for input on what to do.

“It came to a point where it was literally close the store—to maintain the wages we would lose the store—so we went to the employees and we said here's the way it is. And they agreed—they'd rather see the store stay open and take a reduction in benefits—which is where we started—and then ultimately pay went down a little too,” she said.

That was eight years ago—when the coop wasn't doing well financially. However, when the store started making a net profit in fiscal year 2006-2007, workers weren't invited back by the board to discuss what to do with the surplus wealth. One excuse I've heard was, well, the shareholders have abdicated their power to the board through voting, so the board isn't obligated to formally open up their decision-making process to the membership or the workers. We elected them; let representational democracy operate.

But there's a double standard here—if what Mannix said is true: The board wasn't obligated to ask workers whether they wanted to keep their pay and benefits or see the store close, but it did. That was when there was a financial crisis. Now that the store is making profit, that same standard doesn't seem to apply. And in the end, the motives and values expressed by Mannix, the mission, and the principles of the store get overridden.

This is the scarcity of Abundance—using democratic process and opening dialogue when things are bleak in order to make decisions that would otherwise be unethical to make without the voices most impacted by those same decisions and then shrinking the scope of that same democratic process and dialogue when things are going well. To me, the rationale seems to be that since the store has economic position to operate like any other capitalist business, then democracy is billed as inefficient and unnecessary. Hopefully this mentality within the coop is beginning to change.

Direct action gets the goods.

April 10th wasn't only a celebration for workers, it was a momentary expansion of possibility through direct action. Fifteen shareholders donated their dividend checks to a pool of money and raised $368.40. This money was redistributed to fifteen workers who received individual checks for $24.56. Checks were distributed to assistants, supervisors, and employees with no title. Managers, coordinators, and buyers did not receive checks.

In addition to this, a resolution was brought for workers, shareholders, customers, and community members to sign demanding the board implement a living wage within two years with raises for those making $7.25 to $8.00 immediately.

“We're going to submit a resolution to the board of directors and hopefully we'll get enough signatures to get that looked at. We know it's going to be a work in progress so it might take a while but I think that it's a very positive step,” said Cook, regarding the resolution.

The resolution read as such: “Resolved, that the shareholders of Genesee Coop Natural Foodstore, d/b/a Abundance Cooperative Market, demand that the Board of Directors implement a living wage policy for employees, to be recalculated each year for inflation, planned and implemented within two years but no later than two years, with an immediate, meaningful raise for all non-managerial employees making at or under $8.00.” A supporting statement followed.

By the end of the day, the necessary 20 signatures were given by shareholders in order to have the resolution be heard by the board. The resolution will be heard by the board in the basement of Abundance (62 Marshall St.) at 7PM on Wednesday, April 28th. Shareholders, workers, and former workers are urged to attend.

“If you're a shareholder please let the board of directors know that you support the [living-wage] resolution. If you're a regular shopper, voice your opinions to the cashiers and to the managers and let them know that it's something you believe in,” said Cook.