Updated on April 18, 2023.
Dozens of workers at Ben & Jerry’s flagship scoop shop on Church Street in Burlington are trying to form a union.
The employees, known as “scoopers,” filed an election petition on Monday with the National Labor Relations Board and launched a public campaign. They’re seeking to join Workers United Upstate New York and Vermont, an SEIU-affiliate that has helped ignite a wave of organizing among Starbucks baristas in recent years.
It’s a pivotal moment for the Vermont-born company, whose founders and namesakes are outspoken progressives and have long imbued their business with a social justice mission. Ben Cohen cochaired the 2020 presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), one of the most pro-union politicians in Congress. Following the sale of Ben & Jerry’s to the multinational consumer goods company Unilever in 2000, an independent board of directors has continued to oversee its social justice work.
But none of the iconic ice cream company’s scoop shops are organized, the Washington Post reported on Monday. Unions are rare in the American service sector.
“The social activism that we really work for externally just does not exist the way that it needs to internally,” said Rebeka Mendelsohn, a shift manager and University of Vermont senior who has worked at Ben & Jerry’s for two years. “If managers in corporate can’t recognize that, it’s my job to show them.”
The union drive will be closely watched, given its parallel to ongoing organizing efforts at Starbucks, which the company has vehemently opposed. The Ben & Jerry’s workers are being advised by Jaz Brisack, a former Starbucks barista who led the first successful organizing drive at several locations in Buffalo, N.Y., in 2021.
“I think this is part of the same uprising,” said Brisack, now the organizing director for Workers United Upstate New York and Vermont. Workers, Brisack said, “want their company to make good on what it says it believes.”
Ben & Jerry’s spokesperson Sean Greenwood initially told Seven Days on Monday that the company had only received the petition on Sunday night. On Tuesday morning, Greenwood released a statement saying that the company welcomes the initiative, and is committed to a fair, inclusive and fun workplace.
“For almost 45 years, we’ve sought to center the principles of justice and equity at the heart of our business model. That’s why we recognize and support the rights of all workers to unionize and collectively bargain,” the company said in a statement.
Mendelsohn said she and her coworkers began organizing over the past couple of weeks, though discontent had been growing among the ranks of the predominantly college-student workforce for longer. Ben & Jerry’s annual Free Cone Day became a flash point earlier this month when managers decided to remove the employee tip jar for the day, Mendelsohn said. Workers pushed back, tips were restored, and Mendelsohn went home that night with “more money than I’ve ever made in a night at Ben & Jerry’s.”
“I think it fundamentally changed the way that I thought about communicating with managers,” Mendelsohn said.
She contacted the Vermont AFL-CIO, which helped connect scoopers with Brisack and Workers United.
Worker-organizers delivered a letter explaining their union effort to store management on Sunday evening, Mendelsohn, a member of their organizing committee, said.
“Despite record-breaking profits, incredible bounce-back post-pandemic, and unwavering smiles, our staff is exploited within our work environment,” reads the letter addressed to Cohen, cofounder Jerry Greenfield and others.
Unilever’s ice cream portfolio, which includes a number of other brands, netted more than $800 million in global operating profit last year, a decrease of 6.8 percent compared to the prior year, according to a company report.
The scoopers’ letter was signed by two dozen employees, though organizers claim support for the union is unanimous. The election petition seeks to cover 40 positions at the shop.
Ben & Jerry’s could choose to acknowledge the union; otherwise, a vote would be administered through the NLRB. In their letter, employees asked Ben & Jerry’s to agree to a dozen “fair election principles” that would set out election terms more favorable to the union than federal law requires. Baristas have made a similar demand of Starbucks.
Agreeing to the list of principles, Mendelsohn said of her employer, “would be an incredible step toward recognizing unions and setting a precedent for what that looks like.”
Got something to say?
Send a letter to the editor and we'll publish your feedback in print!
