Lowe’s, the American big box home improvement chain, is facing an effort to form the company’s first US union in New Orleans, Louisiana, where 172 workers, under the banner of Lowe’s Workers United, recently filed a petition for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
Lowe’s operates or services about 2,000 stores in the US and Canada with more than 300,000 full and part-time employees, and has aggressively opposed unionization efforts. The company has staffed union avoidance investigators, developed anti-union training videos for employees, and lost a case in 2021 at the NLRB over a company policy that prohibited employees from discussing wages.
Felix Allen, an employee who is organizing at the New Orleans store and has worked at Lowe’s for about two years, explained the union talk started earlier this year with co-workers. They’ve been galvanized by similar campaigns at Starbucks and Amazon, which have come to symbolize a rejuvenated US labor movement.
Allen said grievances include heat stress, not being able to take adequate water breaks, scheduling issues, lagging wages, as well as understaffing and aggressive customers as a result.
“We just felt like we needed to stand up for ourselves,” said Allen. “Folks who have been there many years are still getting paid less than $15 an hour. Personally, I can operate three different types of forklifts and I get paid less than $13 an hour and I’ve trained incoming employees.”
He compared this pay with Lowe’s profits in the past two years and the CEO’s salary. Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison received $17.8m in total compensation in fiscal year 2022, 787 times the median employee pay for the same time period. The company spent over $13 bn in stock buybacks and $2bn in dividends to shareholders in 2021. He also claimed new employees have gotten higher pay than employees with seniority in many cases.
“They’re just treating us like commodities or robots. We’re just numbers to them,” said Allen. “We’ve had folks who’ve been injured on the job and have not been dealt with fairly, they’ve been through the wringer, and same thing for folks who have needed to take a leave of absence or a paternity leave or need accommodations for health reasons.”
Since filing for the union election, Allen said several managers from different stores have come in, asking workers questions, and two union avoidance consultants walked around mischaracterizing union dues.
A spokesperson for Lowe’s said in an email, “Lowe’s is committed to having a positive working environment and empowers associates to communicate directly with leadership. We value this relationship, and we do not believe that unionizing is in the best interests of our associates.”
Lowe’s largest competitor, Home Depot, is also facing a union election. If successful, it would create the home improvement retailer’s first unionized US store. The union election is scheduled for 2 November, with the vote count to be held a few days later.
Home Depot has also historically opposed unions, with anti-union training videos and executives speaking out against legislation to facilitate union organizing. In 2019, a group of delivery drivers at Home Depot in San Diego, California, successfully unionized with the Teamsters.
The union election petition, filed in Philadelphia, seeks to represent 274 Home Depot employees with Home Depot Workers United, in what would be an independent union akin to the Amazon Labor Union.
“There are a lot of things we have been put through in that store, but I would say the biggest thing that pushed us to this point is we kind of just felt forgotten,” said Vincent Quiles, an employee at the Home Depot and union organizer. “They rode high on calling us essential workers and stuff like that, but when it came time to treat us essentially, it didn’t feel like they did.”
He explained some of the pressing problems behind the organizing campaign: short staffing, lagging wages, and a lack of investment and resources for workers compared with the store’s sales and profits since the Covid-19 pandemic began.
Quiles claimed Home Depot has responded to the campaign with an influx of managers from different areas to try to discourage the unionization effort.
“Ultimately, what we want to keep this focused on is empowering the people in that building, and just encouraging people that might be looking at what we’re doing here,” added Quiles.
A spokesperson for Home Depot responded to the campaign in an email. “We look forward to talking with our associates about their concerns. Our open-door policy is designed to assure all associates that they can bring concerns directly to leadership, and we have a track record of working successfully with our associates to resolve them. While we will of course work through the NLRB process, we do not believe unionization is the best solution for our associates.”
