My client, the Dill Pickle Food Co-op (DPFC), is pleased to announce that their former labor union, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) was decertified on 12/20/22. The IWW was replaced with the DPFC’s own employees’ union, the Dill Pickle Food Co-op Workers Union.

The new Union & DPFC are excited and pleased that employees chose to go their own way and start their own union. The Co-op’s board of directors has consistently and publicly said that they wanted employees to be unionized. Unfortunately, the IWW just didn’t work out for all concerned.

A few noteworthy items about IWW’s decertification. The IWW was the DPFC’s union since 2017. The IWW’s relationship with the workers and management at Dill Pickle was erratic, so the workers pursued a petition to either renew or end their IWW affiliation. Many workers no longer wanted to work with them to the extent that 16 out of 20 employees filed authorization cards for the decertification and election petition, but the election itself was close. Only six employees voted. Three votes were in favor of the new union, two were in favor of the IWW, and one vote was voided because it wasn’t properly completed. Below is the official NLRB account of the vote. It only takes a majority of those voting to win an NLRB election. Finally, the IWW was founded & based in Chicago; but so was the Dill Pickle.

All opinions expressed are solely those of the author.