BURLINGTON — A group of employees from the downtown Ben & Jerry’s ice cream shop who are pushing to form a union announced on Friday that company management signed a commitment to fair union negotiations.
The group, which recently sent a letter notifying the company of its organizing, will next work to gain official recognition and to enter negotiations for a union contract.
One of the employee organizers, Rebeka Mendelsohn, called the company’s commitment “an exceptional achievement that speaks to just how deeply this company truly cares about social activism.”
She was among the scoop shop employees, local activists and state labor leaders who convened a press conference outside the Church Street store to celebrate the step toward contract negotiations. They were joined by U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who recalled when Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield started selling ice cream in a former gas station nearby on St. Paul Street in the 1970s.
From the beginning, Sanders said, the company has been “determined to spread the gospel of social justice.”
“I’m very proud that we have here in Vermont a company like Ben & Jerry’s — that has long stood for progressive principles — tonight saying they’re willing to sit down and negotiate a good contract with their workers,” Sanders said, speaking through a bullhorn in front of a line of scoop shop employees.
The Burlington store would be the first Ben & Jerry’s location to be unionized, according to Jaz Brisack, an organizer with Workers United of Upstate New York and Vermont.
Employees at the shop are organizing under the name Scoopers United as they seek to join Workers United, an international union that includes food service workers in Vermont and upstate New York. Many are college and high school students. In the letter to the company, they complained of insufficient wages and inadequate training around how to respond to public drug use they sometimes encounter at work.
Liz Medina, executive director of the Vermont Labor Council, said the group has so far had to overcome “really difficult working conditions, school and other responsibilities, and broken labor laws.
“They rapidly overcame each and every obstacle, and we couldn’t be happier for Scoopers United,” she said.
Mendelsohn read a statement that was sent by the company, in which Ben & Jerry’s leaders said they were proud of the progress and that they appreciated the “professionalism, candor and positivity” of the union drive thus far.
In an emailed statement sent to VTDigger late Friday afternoon, Ben & Jerry’s public relations director Sean Greenwood said the company’s scoop shop management welcomed the employees’ event.
“We are working collaboratively and proudly share that the Burlington Scoop Shop management signed on to the principles that the representatives proposed,” Greenwood wrote. “This should be regarded as a step in solidarity in the spirit of constant improvement towards a fair, inclusive, and equitable workplace.”
The “Fair Election Principles,” a list of 12 commitments around the union organizing process, was developed by Richard Bensinger, an organizer with Workers United. Among other things, the principles say that the company can’t retaliate against organizing efforts.
Ben & Jerry’s has been owned by the international conglomerate Unilever since 2000.
Bensinger recognized the company for signing the pledge, saying it was an “unusual thing in this day and age to have a corporation like Unilever — Ben & Jerry’s — actually take a different stand than we’ve seen from Starbucks and REI and Trader Joe’s.”
The organizing by the Ben & Jerry’s employees has also inspired another group of workers from down the street. Kelumua Summa, a 19-year-old barista at Black Cap Coffee, said following “the unprecedented success of the Scoopers United campaign thus far, we are launching our own unionization as Black Cap Workers United.”
The atmosphere of cooperation between management and organizers was contrasted by a Starbucks barista, Adam Franz, from Starbucks Workers United, which voted last year to unionize at the South Burlington location.
Franz noted that “on the surface” Starbucks and Ben & Jerry’s aren’t so different from each other, with humble beginnings growing into international brands. However, Franz said, “in the case of Starbucks, this progressive veneer crumbles in the face of workers coming together to stand up for ourselves.”
The next steps in the process of negotiations between Ben & Jerry’s and the scoop shop staff are still being determined, according to Brisack.
