Protecting Workers

The Building Blocks Project believes that Good Jobs are key to Good Health. While we encourage new food access opportunites in underserved communities, we need to make sure that these stores are sources of dignified jobs that pay a living wage and provide good benefits. Every worker must have the right to organize.

Many high-end stores provide neither affordable food nor good jobs. Gourmet Groceries are the fastest growing segment of the supermarket industry. These stores specialize in expensive products and low wages: they typically pay between $6-$7 an hour, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. Is your gourmet grocer a sweatshop? Find out here. To learn more about the food retail industry and the differences between how union and non-union stores treat working-class Americans, read this report.

Many gourmet grocers discriminate against their employees and against the people in their communities. Many of them make hiring and firing decisions based on race, and they refuse to accept food stamps or WIC. Stores intimidate workers so that they can't speak up about unsanitary conditions. Workers are forced to sell yesterday's food at today's prices. And stores steal wages from workers by not paying the proper minimum wage and overtime that workers have earned.

Get involved in the Gourmet Grocer campaign and help hold the owners of these gourmet grocery stores accountable. We can call on them to act with integrity - create good jobs with fair pay and just treatment of their workers.

Good grocery stores afford workers the right to organize without fear. Unionized supermarkets provide good jobs with living wages and health benefits. Bodegas and gourmet grocers offer only over-priced foods that do not meet community needs. They force workers to subsist on poverty-level wages and do not provide the good jobs that build empowered communities.

Bodega workers typically make $240-$300 per week.
Gourmet grocery workers usually earn only $6 to $7 per hour.

These stores violate wage and hour laws.
They hire, fire, and promote workers based on immigration status and ethnicity.
They offer no path for career advancement.
They ask workers to depend on Social Security and Medicare instead of providing employer-paid health benefits.