Winning Big at River Valley Co-Op
Karl Folz is a shop steward at River Valley Co-Op in Northampton, Mass. and member of UFCW Local 1459. Read how Karl and his coworkers at the co-op fought for — and won — a strong contract with an immediate $2 raise, featured in Essential Voice.
Karl and his fellow stewards and bargaining committee members at Massachusetts River Valley Co-op.
When the union at River Valley Co-Op first formed, many of my coworkers felt they didn’t know how a union would help them. That changed when management started a new policy where workers had to park in a separate employee parking lot, then either take a shuttle to the store, or walk across a dangerous street with traffic moving at 40 MPH.
Workers demanded to be compensated for the additional time spent parking in the employee lot and traveling to the store. Workers organized a campaign around their demand, and in the end, we won!
The co-op also agreed to Interest-Based Bargaining, a bargaining strategy meant to make contract bargaining a little less adversarial. We bargained our last contract in 2021, but going into our contract negotiations in January 2025, most union stewards felt that Interest-Based Bargaining was not very helpful for workers, so we started talks of having open bargaining instead.
During the process of gathering bargaining proposals from members, the idea of open bargaining was discussed; the stewards were in favor, so all workers could see what goes into winning a better contract.
The stewards presented 45 bargaining proposals. The proposals included living wages ($23/hour), cost of living adjustments (COLA), improved vacation and sick time, language protecting workers from customer abuse, protection from discipline, and seniority-based raises.
After months of bargaining, River Valley Co-Op’s negotiator had still refused to come to the table.
In addition, we found out that the Co-Op had filed an unfair labor practice (ULP) charge against its own workers. Was it because they were so focused on their bottom line that they were willing to go to battle with their own workers? On May 8th, 2025, we organized a walkout.
As we got closer and closer to our contract expiration deadline in June, we took a new approach. One steward on the bargaining committee, a former teachers’ union member, had the idea to utilize a whiteboard in the room so the stewards could drop in and workshop on the proposals that the co-op was still not agreeing to. Because we had open bargaining, everyone could see exactly where we were with bargaining and what decisions we still had to make together.
In the end, the company tried to negotiate us down to either $19.75 starting pay with sick and vacation time, or $20 with no vacation time. We called their bluff and voted it down. They came back to us with $20 and sick and vacation time — an immediate $2 raise for everyone. We also won:
Faster vacation accrual and addition of a 5th week paid vacation.
Anniversary date annual wage increases not tied to hours worked, boosting part-timers.
Adding a 5th steward in each store to help address worker needs and concerns.
Enshrining protections for immigrant workers.
As we celebrated and shared the news with our coworkers, we were already thinking about what to do with the next contract.