Insulted by 1% wage offer, Half Price Books workers strike

Striking Half Price Books workers picketed the Roseville store Thursday morning.

Fed up with slow negotiations and an “insulting” wage offer, Half Price Books workers in the Twin Cities called a two-day strike this morning, and more than 40 union members – about three-quarters of the bargaining unit – showed up in Brooklyn Center at the site of scheduled talks with management.

But the bosses responded by canceling negotiations for the week and closing all four stores – the latest example, union member Hanna Anderson said, that the company is more interested in dragging out the process than in taking workers’ demands seriously.

“They told us that they needed the day to figure out the logistics of running the stores, so they couldn’t bargain,” said Anderson, a shift leader at the store in St. Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood. “An hour later we all got messages that all four of the stores were going to be closed for the next two days.”

That left workers, including longtime bookseller Aaron Kerr, fuming on the picket line.

“They are not in there. The stores are not open. Why are they not at the bargaining table?” Kerr said outside the Roseville location where he has worked for more than two decades. “That is something that makes me incredibly angry.”

Union members are angry, too, about HPB’s stubborn wage proposal, stuck at increases of 1% annually since the company made its first economic proposal in May. Anderson said the offer is insulting, especially given that the union scaled back its demands in bargaining earlier this week.

“This past session we came down a little bit,” she said. “They are holding to their 1%, and they refuse to even entertain anything else, which is obviously very upsetting to everyone here. Especially the past week, when the company basically said we don’t deserve a living wage, that really frustrated everyone.”

Workers have proposed increasing HPB’s starting pay from $15 to $16 per hour and $1.50 wage hikes for other employees, plus a new pay scale based on longevity.

Currently, workers get quarterly bonuses and annual raises at their bosses’ discretion, but raises of 2% or 3% don’t amount to much when your pay is stuck at $15 per hour, Anderson said.

“And there have been years where, if we were getting a new computer system, there weren’t bonuses,” she said. “It is just if they are willing to give us them. You can’t rely on them.”

Workers from the St. Paul and Roseville stores bargain jointly with workers from St. Louis Park and Coon Rapids locations. They all voted to join the United Food and Commercial Workers – locals 1189 and 663 – in separate elections starting in November 2021.

Negotiations over a first contract began over 19 months ago, and they had been productive before reaching the economic phase, with tentative agreements on workplace health and safety, grievance procedures, scheduling. Other agreements would prevent managers from filling jobs that would take hours away from union members, and would clearly establish a process, based primarily on seniority, for potential layoffs.

Talks turned to economics this spring, and after a round of handbilling and informational picketing failed to move management, workers finally have called a strike, formally citing charges of unfair labor practices that the union filed over management’s failure to share “crucial information.”

It’s a big step for a new union to take, Anderson acknowledged.

“We have been saying ‘strike’ is kind of like the s-word,” she said. “People were nervous. But we have legal protections. We are really a close-knit community, and seeing everyone from all four stores has been really awesome.”

Kerr said support for the strike was overwhelming, and it showed in the turnout at the planned bargaining session this morning.

“In our meetings, everybody showed up and it was almost unanimous that we need to do this,” he said. “We have got to do whatever it takes to make management understand we are serious, or they will continue to pretend that what they want to give us is completely reasonable.”

Workers held picketing at all four stores today, traveling from Coon Rapids to Roseville in the morning, then hitting St. Paul and St. Louis Park in the afternoon.

Supporters are welcome to join the picket line (monitor the union’s social media feeds for locations). Union members are also asking supporters to call on Regional Manager Bill Holland to get back to the bargaining table and settle a fair contract.