Mississippi Market Workers Speak Out Following Landslide Victory

On Wednesday, October 9, workers at all three locations of Mississippi Market voted overwhelmingly, by an 80% margin, to form their union with UFCW 1189, after months of hard work by worker organizers in their own stores. Please read a message from these workers below in honor of this victory:

Dear Community Members, 

On October 9, we, along with our co-workers, voted overwhelmingly to form our union at Mississippi Market. This comes after months of discussions among ourselves and a few short weeks after going public and announcing our intentions to the company. Now that the vote is over, we feel overwhelmed with gratitude, and want to thank some of the people who brought us here.

Thank you to our coworkers for going through this together with us. Thank you for asking questions and helping each other find the answers. Thank you for making this process respectful, engaging, and powerful. For those who voted yes, thank you for your support. For those who voted no or chose not to vote, we respect your decision and are ready to move forward together. We are excited for the next step and want everyone to feel included no matter how you voted in the election!

Thank you to our community supporters for standing by us. Your vocal and immediate support made a huge difference for us. Everyone who went to the board meeting, commented on our social media, and came to the store to tell us you believe in us made a huge impact on us and reminded us why we love being co-op workers in this community.  

Thank you to all the Minnesota co-op workers who organized their union before us. The workers at other co-ops paved the way for us and we appreciate the work they did to make this road a little easier for us to walk. 

And finally, thank you to the leadership of Mississippi Market. We were nervous about initiating this process, because we know that management, even progressive co-op management, can react very negatively to workers standing up for their rights. We approached this process with the belief that unionization is not inherently adversarial, and we felt that approach reciprocated. We were allowed to make this decision wholly for ourselves without any pressure from management, and we know that’s not always the case for workers. We look forward to continuing this positive relationship and bargaining a contract that makes all stakeholders proud, together.

We are excited to continue to learn and grow together as we build our contract and strengthen our union.

In Solidarity,

The Worker Organizing Committee, Mississippi Market