Costco’s top executive is blaming the company’s leadership for fostering conditions that spurred workers at a location in Norfolk, Virginia, to vote last month to join the Teamsters union.
A Dec. 29 letter to Costco’s U.S. employees attributed to then-outgoing CEO Craig Jelinek and incoming chief executive Ron Vachris that was posted on Reddit indicated that the executives were “disappointed” with the workers’ decision because it reflected “a failure on our part.”
“At Costco, we take great pride in our relationships with each other. We’re not anti-union, but our core value of ‘taking care of our employees’ has never been the result of any union,” Jelinek and Vachris wrote in the letter, which also appeared on X, the site formerly known as Twitter.
Jelinek retired as CEO of Costco on Jan. 1, when Vachris, a longtime company executive who had served as president and chief operating officer, took over the role.
Just over half of the 203 ballots counted in the election were cast in favor of unionizing, according to the National Labor Relations Board, which oversaw the vote.
The Teamsters union says it counts more than 18,000 Costco workers as members. Costco employs about 206,000 full- and part-time workers in the United States, where it runs 600 locations in 47 states and Puerto Rico.
The union said in a Dec. 21 statement about the vote that it was seeking “strong representation to address years of concerns and improve working conditions,” adding that many of the Norfolk workers who voted to unionize were influenced by a national master agreement with Costco it ratified in October 2022. That agreement raised wages and pension contributions, established a “more flexible” attendance policy and provided for higher bonuses, according to the union.
Costco’s response to the unionization vote stands in contrast to the way other retailers have dealt with efforts by workers to organize.
Trader Joe’s, for example, has had an adversarial relationship with workers at several locations who voted to join the Trader Joe’s United union, with both sides filing complaints with the National Labor Relations Board. Starbucks has also sparred with workers who have sought to unionize.
