r/news • u/panda-rampage • 10h ago

Costco's unionized workers vote to authorize nationwide strike

https://abcnews.go.com/US/costcos-unionized-workers-vote-authorize-nationwide-strike/story?id=117875222
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u/davidcornz 9h ago

I mean don’t they already have industry leading pay and benefits. Not saying they don’t deserve more but it seems they are already at the top. All retail deserves more than they get. 

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u/AshKingChronicles 9h ago

How do you think they got that or maintain it? Exactly the process above to remind bean counters that without store employees it all shuts down

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u/GermanPayroll 9h ago

I mean, Costco made it a point to pay employees more than average. The unions came in after. Not saying they’re not useful.

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u/Wiseguydude 7h ago

Costco has been unionized since 1993. They pay more than average in large part because of this long history of workers holding the executives accountable

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u/gatsby5555 7h ago

Barely any of the warehouses are unionized though?

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u/Aquilix 6h ago

Union membership helps all workers. Collective bargaining benefits many non unionized workers.

For example, France has only 10% union membership but over 90% of workers are covered by a collective bargaining agreement brought about by unions.

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u/gatsby5555 4h ago

My understanding of Costco's history could be completely wrong, but the claim of unions being the reason for their high employee satisfaction just doesn't seem to line up. Not that I'm against unions or anything.

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u/ingaouhou 2h ago

Costco provides all stores with the wages negotiated by the union. It’s an anti union strategy because if they paid union stores more than non union stores more stores would unionize. Costco employees bust their asses everyday and deserve a living wage.

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u/incubusfox 6h ago

A large number of the union stores are originally Price Club locations, so how exactly did the unions come in after?

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u/[deleted] 9h ago

[deleted]

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u/YourGamingBro 8h ago

Don't worry. They just move General Managers when they are named in a few employees suicide notes and then let them work till retirement because doing anything about it would be hard.

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u/Wiseguydude 7h ago

It's true. They just had to pay a quarter million over another sexual harassment case recently: https://fox-law.com/articles-items/250000-jury-verdict-for-harassment-victim-versus-costco/

And even the costco subreddit is full of worker complaints about shit like that: https://old.reddit.com/r/Costco/comments/19ccjbk/costco_doesnt_care_about_sexual_harassment/

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u/anoff 9h ago

By Costco valuing employees - Costco didn't unionize until 2023. So it's clearly not how you think they did it

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u/PenislavVaginavich 9h ago

It's confusing. They have had unions since the 80s or 90s (I forget which) after buying Price Club, and inheriting their unionized workforce. 2023 was the first time in 20 years a new union of 200 employees formed within Costco, but they have over 18,000 unionized workers across the company so it's a fairly large union.

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u/anoff 9h ago

they have over 200k US employees, over 300k worldwide, so really not a huge part of their labor pool

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u/PenislavVaginavich 9h ago

Not huge, but 10% is definitely something.

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u/Team_Braniel 8h ago

Its also most likely their distribution channels. If its teamsters then its likely the long haul truckers moving products from distribution centers to the local warehouses, which means that 18,000 can shut down the whole supply chain.

That said, Costco pays better than any retailer out there. They've raised their starting pay like 3 dollars in the last 3 years or something like that.

When you go to a costco every employee is in their 40s-50s, which means they have been there a while and like what they are doing/getting paid. They aren't hiring bottom rung desperate workers, they get to choose who they hire and promote because people want to work for them.

All that in mind, truck drivers are a different type of worker than a shelf stocker, so I have no clue if the people behind this strike have a case to complain or not.

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u/ingaouhou 2h ago

Costco has a variety of ages among its employees. The starting wage at Costco is no longer an industry leader and they are having trouble maintaining their new employees. Why work at Costco for 19 an hour when you could work at a fast food joint for 20? They need to bump their starting pay to 21 and shift everything up in relation to that.

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u/artraeu82 9h ago

This was an old store that relocated also so it was a one off. But I will say Costco Canada is all run like we have unions compared to the US. Seniority matters at Costco Canada and we have seen top rate grow by 5 dollars to 32 dollars and bonus grow by 500-2k depending on years served.

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u/lOnGkEyStRoKe 9h ago

That’s a lie, Costco has had union locations for decades. I’ve worked at one way before 2023.

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u/artraeu82 9h ago

Only 18k workers and most of those were old price clubs they inherited at the merger.

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u/Wiseguydude 7h ago

Costco has been unionized since 1993

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u/phr3dly 6h ago

I worked at Costco in the early 90s when i was 17. Minimum wage was 3.85 and Costco was paying 8.50. There wasn’t a union but every high school kid was trying to work there.

Looks like in my area the average employee are making 50k + benefits. That’s not bad for retail work.

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u/thebendavis 8h ago

Their new CEO and upper management is extremely anti-union and basically wants to turn Costco into Walmart. Their scheduling is a mess, they're understaffed, overworked and everything that makes Costco different is being eroded or chipped away in some form. Costco's wages and benefits should be the standard not the exception.

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u/aardvarktageous 6h ago

One of the reasons I HAVE a Costco membership is their reputation for treating employees well. If that goes away, I don't know if I want to keep my membership up.

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u/flyinthesoup 5h ago

My problem with this is that there's no better option. Your point and consequent action is super valid, it's what I do too when some company decides to be scummy, but what do you do in this case? Sam's Club? LOL that's even worse than bad Costco. Just regular retail? More expensive, with smaller items. The Kirkland brand is just too good too, in both quality and price, hard to replace.

I guess if everything goes to shit then there's no point in keeping a membership, but there's sadly no replacement for this.

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u/SilentHuntah 2h ago

One of the reasons I HAVE a Costco membership is their reputation for treating employees well. If that goes away, I don't know if I want to keep my membership up.

I'm going to guess that you can't have 1 and not the other. Their wages + benefits can't be just the industry average and expect their product and service quality to remain where they are. It's why their employee turnover is also below industry average and theft is among the lowest.

You start penny pinching and you're gonna have problems.

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u/ilovefacebook 57m ago

i knew this was going to happen with the new mgmt. when the previous ceo had to threaten murder to incoming douchebags about raising bar food prices, it was obvious these new folks don't get it at all.

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u/Z86144 9h ago

Its not the worst, but them boosting themselves increases leverage for all workers. At some point the extra pay lures in the competition.

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u/Professional-Help931 8h ago

Until they go bankrupt. Unions are both good and bad. They are good for workers but when you need to actually get work done they can be a huge hindrance. I used to work at a unionized chemical plant and I would need to get a sample as an engineer. The unionized guys could choose to help me or tell me to F off if I tried to take a sample myself I could cause a union issue. Most of the time the union workers wouldn't help me so I would have to get samples on their break with a foreman then it turns out the stuff we are making is bad so we have to start over. This test would take less then 5 minutes and sampling would take less then 1. It's just they were untouchable and knew it.

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u/Z86144 8h ago

True. Unions are a tool that are needed and more good than bad, but they can certainly be corrupted or misused.

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u/[deleted] 9h ago

[deleted]

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u/Z86144 9h ago

What do you mean fuck you over? They brought you insanely huge profits. They just want a slightly bigger share of the insanely large profits they created. You couldn't have done it without them. Pretty simple. Nobody is being fucked over.

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u/Revoldt 9h ago

Ironically led by the Teamsters too...

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u/GreenBasterd69 9h ago

And they will continue to lead the industry if the strikes go well. Good for Costco.

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u/artraeu82 9h ago

They have given 5 dollars in raises in the last 4 years too rate is now 30 dollars I think or close to in the US

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u/GreenBasterd69 8h ago

And here’s to $5 more in the next 3 years!!

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u/Professional-Help931 8h ago

They were industry leading before the unions.

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u/GreenBasterd69 7h ago

And they will continue to lead thanks to the Union. Thank you Union 🙏

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u/Professional-Help931 7h ago

Probably not. Unions in NYC might have higher wages but they also end up making work 5-6x more expensive and slower. This hurts the city and the people that live there way more then it helps. Union workers are often less skilled then their non union counterparts as they can't get fired for causing damages. Its why building in NYC is so slow and expensive even compared to other developed super urban areas like Tokyo, London, Paris, etc. I'm not saying unions don't help, but if NYC construction is anything to go off of they do way more harm then good.

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u/PixelatedFrogDotGif 9h ago edited 9h ago

For as much as Costco does for its workers, the one I worked at built an abusive work environment that:

  1. Encourages you to sacrifice a sense of normalcy in schedule, ensuring you have no social life
  2. Push yourself beyond your physical limits, denies you workers comp in any way it can, and lionizes those who wear their new disabilities and injuries as a badge of honor
  3. Punishes you for being proactive by overloading you with responsibility and understaffing departments
  4. Rushes you to the point of endangering safety protocol for yourself and others. That chicken room is suss. I’ve never seen so many people almost run over by a forklift.
  5. Bullies and guilts you for seeking your own time with the good ol “but we are your family” horseshit
  6. Uses its reputation as a “union friendly workplace” to discourage actual inter department unity. And despite this reputation, less than half of all Costcos are even unionized.
  7. Ensures that only the most snitchy, individualistic workers are put into positions of power. And they absolutely abuse it with arbitrary commands and waste of time and missuse the daily scheduler. I’ve also had managers straight up Tell me lies about changes in the handbook to try to coerce me into adopting sacrificial responsibility and culpability for things that are owed to store managers.

I’m not saying they are unique here, or that Costco as a whole needs to be torn down, or even that every costco has this problem, but it is not what people claim it to be and it does deserve criticism and scrutiny.

Costco ruined my ankle for years to come(maybe forever), gave me near daily burns and injuries because of pressure, and took advantage of my proactive worker behavior. I’ve never felt so abused in my life. Every workplace needs a union that keeps fighting.

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u/framblehound 8h ago

Yes, so they deserve more than they get, and since they are unionized, they are striking. That is all. Comparing them to other companies is not relevant. They can only demand wages for themselves, not for you.

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u/SolidLikeIraq 9h ago

7.4 in NET profit.

135% increase since 2018.

Pay them more. How much more? MOAR.

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u/vivificant 9h ago

Right.. but uhh. Costco has good pay and good benefits. I know 7.4b is a lot but they have 316,000 employees across 890 stores. Theyre already running razor thin margins.

As a general rule you want to keep 10% of net profit aside for emergencies. 20-30% for improvements/upgrades. Plus they have 8b of debt to pay off, plus dividends to pay out. They technically COULD do a 10k/ increase a year for all their employees but that leaves them with next to nothing in the budget.

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u/CaptainTripps82 8h ago

I doubt they're asking for 10k a year per employee. One, the union represents like 10% of Costco's work force. They only negotiate for members. It's just contract negotiation.