Opinion | I work at Whole Foods, and I am calling out its hypocrisy

The Amazon-owned company does not live up to its core values. We are ‘essential workers’ only because we are essential to Jeff Bezos' bottom line.

by Alli | 3 Jul 2020

For anyone paying attention, especially during these unprecedented times, you have seen Whole Foods and Amazon’s true colors. I can no longer stay complacent and silenced. This is not OK and not how anyone should be treated, nor should any of this be normalized.

Working at Whole Foods for a decade, I have seen the good and I have seen the horrible — and it isn’t going to get any better.

Whole Foods has not kept its word with its “core values” in quite a few years, even before Amazon bought them out. Here are the core values that Whole Foods proudly talks about:

We sell the highest quality natural and organic foods

While Whole Foods was the OG organic grocery store, they have since limited their organic products and boosted up more shelf space for conventional and their 365 products (365 is the company’s store brand). Most of the food on the hot bar comes pre-packaged in plastic bags. Most of our 365 brand items are filled with canola oil, high amounts of sugar and sodium. It contradicts everything Whole Foods CEO and co-founder John Mackey wrote in his book “The Whole Foods Diet,” by still selling 365 products with the same products that he wouldn’t personally recommend, like canola oil and processed sugars.

Another thing to note about 365 products is that when asked where 365 products were sourced, Whole Foods has responded: “We source all of our products from outside manufacturers; however, the identity of these manufacturers is proprietary information.”

Let’s also not forget about a lawsuit that was filed against Whole Foods back in 1998. The state of California commissioned an independent laboratory to test for the presence of a carcinogenic petrochemical called 1,4-Dioxane in body care products from Whole Foods and discovered that products including 365 dish liquid and shampoo contained the chemical in excess of the legal limit, 20 parts per million. Whole Foods countered the investigation, and the outcome of that lawsuit was never seen.

We satisfy and delight our customer

While some stores have great team members who display care toward their guests, a majority of Whole Foods leaders have shown a discrimination against guests who are BIPOC (Black, Indigenous and people of color). Anytime a person of color comes in, there is a higher chance of leadership telling team members to keep an eye out, even if they’re doing nothing suspicious.

It doesn’t stop there. When a Whole Foods opens up in a low-income neighborhood, you’ll be sure to see the gentrification happening in that community. So what kind of customers are we satisfying and delighting?

We promote team member growth and happiness

“Our success is dependent upon the collective energy, intelligence, and contributions of all of our Team Members.”

Many team members, including myself, have experienced sexual harassment in their Whole Foods “career.” Male leaders have been known to hire “attractive” females, asking them inappropriate questions and threatening team members with write-ups or their risk of losing their job, if the leader doesn’t get his way.

When this happens, some team members try to speak out but just get silenced or mocked, resorting to a toxic work environment. Along with that, there are also a majority of stores that have had their fair share of favoritism. Many “leaders” have their close circles helping them move up to positions while others who have been working years to climb the ladder get zero recognition and given no opportunities to grow.

When you look at Whole Foods, most of the store leadership is white. It is very rare for a minority to reach that title, but this doesn’t stop at just store level. When you take a step further and see who holds the highest positions at the global level, 76% are male, 24% of leadership is female, and only 10% are POC. So tell me how this is promoting team member growth?

Not only that, but Whole Foods has cut down on actual programs that would help bring growth to the teams like Team Builds, Vendor Fairs and live Healthy Eating Demos in stores. We have also cut our teams to a skeleton crew, causing team members to work multiple jobs in the store, with their chances slim to none of taking courses and trainings online on their own time.

We practice win-win partnerships with our suppliers

Since the buyout by Amazon, Whole Foods has separated ties with many locally owned companies and replaced them with their own 365 label or with commercialized brands with poor ingredients. I do not see a win-win partnership with their suppliers.

Earlier this year, Whole Foods got called out by a union representing farmers in the Midwest and North Carolina. Members of the Farm Labor Organizing Committee “faced abusive working conditions, wage theft, threats, and violations of basic health and safety protocols in the tobacco and sweet potato fields of North Carolina, including on farms that supply Whole Foods,” the union said in a statement.

Not only that, but let me remind you that Whole Foods used prison labor in the past. Prisoners, who earned as little as 12 cents an hour, worked in farm-raised fisheries, and we sold fish for $12 a pound. Seems pretty ethical.

STREET ROOTS REPORT: Inside Oregon’s prison workforce: Exploitation or opportunity?

We create profits and prosperity

“We know that profits are essential to create capital for growth, job security, and overall financial success. Profits are the ‘savings’ every business needs in order to change and evolve to meet the future goals.”

So tell me, where are those “savings” currently? While workers are being deemed “essential” during a pandemic, it is very rarely followed up with any action proving they are essential (and no those thank-you commercials and Hero shirts are not what they’re talking about). With having health benefits being stripped away months before COVID-19 hit, a joke of a “hazardous pay” (which got taken away much too early) and bare to minimum personal protective equipment and safety protocols, team members are forced to work in poor conditions.

STREET ROOTS REPORT: Portland Whole Foods employee speaks out for those too fearful to come forward

With many team members in fear of losing their jobs, they continue to risk their lives. Meanwhile, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos grew his fortune by $24 billion in the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Guardian reported.

The Whole Foods website states, “We are stewards for our parent company, Amazon, and we have a responsibility to use their capital wisely and frugally with the goal to increase its value over the long-term.”

It really shows who Whole Foods is loyal is to, and it is not their team members.

We care about our community and the environment

Before Amazon bought it out, Whole Foods Market has been straying from its roots, most noticeably its environmentally friendly practices. Back in 2006, writer Michael Pollan pointed out the hypocrisy of John Mackey in his book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” He wrote that for a business that markets organic and sustainable values, it didn’t make sense that it would continue buying most of its produce from agribusiness giants like Earthbound Farm and Cal-Organic Farms. Not only that, but it continues to partner more with big farms like Horizon, which claims it’s sustainable and treats its cows ethically, but multiple times in the past, Horizon has been called out for its lack of space for their cows to roam.

When Amazon showed up, our waste became tenfold, with a company that has been known to silence team members for speaking out on the environmental impact this company has. It has shown in the stores the immense waste there is partnering with Amazon, with most products that are sent to the stores not even being recyclable.

Stores get sent Amazon Prime propaganda fliers for multiple events, bulky plastic Prime signs to hang all over the store and registers, and a ton of plastic waste for stores who do Amazon returns. Not only that, but Whole Foods once had a Green Mission program that was utilized to remind our guests and team members about how to properly care for our stores’ environmental impact. That group has since been either taken out of stores completely or given very little attention.

Right now, our Black community needs our support to help end white supremacy that runs very deep in this country. Amazon recently said in a statement that “inequitable and brutal treatment of Black people in our country must stop” and promised to “stand in solidarity with the Black community — our employees, customers, and partners — in the fight against systemic racism and injustice.”

But when you really look at the actions, Amazon has shown the opposite.

Amazon and Whole Foods are just another conglomerate company that says one thing like “standing with Black Lives Matter,” but then continues to exploit their BIPOC community. Their only interest is how much money they make and how they can hijack a rebellion that threatens their status quo — showing “support” with empty actions. This is beyond hypocritical and a straight insult to all of us.

Even before the protests began, Amazon’s Staten Island facility protested against unsafe working conditions amid the pandemic. Christian Smalls, who was a Black leader for the walkout, was not only abruptly fired but leaked internal emails showing that Amazon’s top lawyer also tried to smear him as “not smart or articulate” in order to squelch unionization efforts.

The same concerns were expressed with Whole Foods employees, and they did little to none, making each region create their own rules, having some stores care more about their team members’ safety than others.

They gave us the title “essential” not because we’re “essential” to the community but because we are essential to Jeff Bezos. Being “essential” to the community was just a rouse to make us feel better about ourselves while demoralizing us. In actuality, Amazon/Whole Foods is damaging our communities — especially our BIPOC community.

In some cities, Whole Food leadership has had team members sent home or fired for demonstrating support the Black Lives Matter movement. Whether team members were wearing masks or pins, they were told to not come to work.

Also, don’t forget the incident in Philadelphia where a team member spoke out about their store leadership giving away $120 worth of free food to the police, something that is actually legally prohibited in that city. This team member lost his job just for speaking the truth. Why are we silencing our team members?

In the summer of 2018, Amazon partnered with several police departments across the U.S. to advertise the Ring platform in return for free Ring smart home security cameras to their communities. In Lakeland, Fla., the police department is contractually obligated to encourage residents to download the Ring app. For every download, the police department gets a $10 credit that can be used toward the purchase of more Ring cameras.

STREET ROOTS REPORT: With this Ring: Is the Amazon device sealing an unholy marriage between police and Big Data?

At the same time, Amazon developed its own facial recognition tech, called Rekognition, which is a powerful surveillance system readily available to violate rights. Amazon also sells this product to law enforcement agencies. This program can be used to target and even arrest protesters exercising their First Amendment rights. This same footage can also be used to conduct facial recognition searches to find other protesters and share with other agencies like enables Immigrations and Customs Enforcement.

These surveillance partnerships erode the privacy rights and civil liberties, especially for BIPOC communities. Although Amazon announced that it would place a one-year moratorium on police use of Rekognition because of the Black Lives Matter movement, this is still not a permanent solution.

Amazon also has several contracts with the Department of Homeland Security. U.S. authorities manage their immigration caseload with Palantir software, a mix between Google and the CIA. It receives taxpayer dollars to provide the algorithm for many government agencies, facilitating the tracking down of would-be deportees.

Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing service, hosts these databases, while Palantir provides the computer programs to organize the data. So, Amazon effectively helps ICE detain and deport. Amazon, to this day, is still using these programs; the ultra-wealthy are redefining their agenda, helping our government agencies to do their jobs.

Bezos vs. his workers

Let’s take a close look at the financial decisions of Bezos — the founder, CEO and president of Whole Foods’ parent company. Why are both Amazon and Whole Foods workers suffering daily and are being treated like robots if Bezos is set to be the first trillionaire of our time?

In 2017, Amazon reportedly took in $5.6 billion in U.S. profits. So how much did Amazon pay in U.S. income tax on that enormous profit? Amazon paid zero dollars in federal income taxes in 2017. Why? Because Amazon’s global headquarters is not in Seattle, but in the tiny landlocked nation of Luxembourg (Amazon employs more than 40,000 people in Seattle, compared to 1,500 people in Luxembourg). The European Union has accused Luxembourg of giving illegal tax breaks to Amazon and has ordered the country to recover $295 million in back taxes from Amazon.

Bezos is the richest person in the world, as his personal net worth was $156 billion last year. And this year, he unloaded $3.4 billion in Amazon shares just before the stock market peaked in mid-February. Selling a big chunk of his Amazon shares, before the worldwide scale of COVID-19 was fully acknowledged and before the stock market collapsed, saved him from losing money, and he was able to make a profit.

How is it that someone set to be a trillionaire can’t give their workers basic health care and continues to cut jobs and give their workers outdated tools for their jobs?

We have downgraded our register system by using buggy software, which is close to beta-testing a program, machines are consistently breaking down, and we have faulty equipment. We get told that we will receive updates to fix certain issues, but when one issue gets fixed, another issue arises. Or, we get told that we are updating our systems to add a new feature even though we haven’t fixed the current issues we are currently having.

How is it that we got bought out by one of the biggest and richest technological companies, and yet we still have these outdated technological problems? Instead, Bezos spends his fortune on his space exploration program, Blue Origin.

Another blatant example showing how Amazon has zero interest in team member well-being is the fact that during the start of COVID-19, Amazon invested in heating recognition to monitor working environments to see who is more likely to unionize. Whole Foods has been using an interactive heat map to monitor its 510 locations across the U.S. and assign each store a unionization risk score based on such criteria as employee loyalty, turnover rate and racial diversity.

Data collected in the heat map suggests that stores with low racial and ethnic diversity, especially those located in poor communities, are more likely to unionize. Back in 2018, there was a 45-minute leaked training video that Amazon sent to team leaders at Whole Foods to curb union activity. The narrator openly stated that the video was “specifically designed to give you the tools that you need for success when it comes to labor organizing” and that “we do not believe unions are in the best interest of our customers or shareholders or, most importantly, our associates.”

Unions give workers rights and protection. Instead of trying to improve worker compensation and general working conditions (especially during COVID-19), this company spends its money on tracking team members.

Instead, the company cuts labor during the pandemic, claiming that “we don’t have enough of a budget in our labor to hire more people,” which has caused hiring freezes. Team members have to work several departments, adding to their responsibilities without any increase in pay.

They know that they are exploiting team members.

Enough is enough. While the world is slowly waking up and we’re seeing the corruption within our society, it is time to stand up for ourselves as humans and stop supporting the behavior of these billionaire tycoons that have zero interest for their workers.

In the words of Matthew Nisbet, professor of communication and public policy at Northeastern University in Boston, “A few ultra-wealthy individuals are making decisions about the future of the planet with little accountability or transparency.”

Jeff Bezos is one of them.

Alli is an assistant team leader at a Whole Foods in Portland. She supplied Street Roots with proof of employment upon request but has asked that her full name be withheld in order to protect her identity and employment status.

Opinion pieces such as this reflect the opinions of the author and not those of Street Roots.

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