Greg Jaffe wins January Sidney for Moving Account of Union Organizing at a Dollar General Store

[douglas9]

Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post wins the January Sidney Award for “The worker revolt comes to a Dollar General in Connecticut,” a deeply reported piece that chronicles a struggle for job security and respect at an outpost of the discount retailer.

The story opens with a desperate phone call to the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) from Shellie Parsons, a 37-year-old single mom who was terrified that she was about to lose the job that has enabled her to escape an abusive relationship and recover from a heroin addiction. That call resulted in a unionization effort that pitted six near-minimum-wage workers against a company with nearly $34 billion in revenue, over 157,000 employees and 17,683 stores, not one of which is unionized.

Dollar stores have carved out a niche in high-poverty rural communities. There are now more dollar stores in the United States than all the Walmart, Starbucks and McDonald’s locations combined.

“Dollar General would stop at nothing to keep an ‘at will’ workforce. ‘At will’ means I can fire you for any reason I want as long as it’s not color, religion or ethnicity. It’s that ultimate power of intimidation,” explained David Cook, the president of UFCW Local 655 in Missouri.

https://hillmanfoundation.org/sidney-awards/greg-jaffe-wins-january-sidney-moving-account-union-organizing-dollar-general-store