After a five-month, well-organized campaign, UE Local 255 won an important battle with Hunger Mountain Co-op, pressuring management to uphold the internal hiring procedures specified in our contract. 

“When we fight, we win,” said Toby Madrone, our local’s president. “We led an intentional and thoughtful internal campaign that included educating our coworkers, which helped them understand and unify around our fight. And it worked!”

In December 2025, beloved coworker Genesis VanDyke applied for a production cook position in the prepared foods department. Genesis started working at the Co-op when she was a teenager and has worked full-time at the Co-op for seven years. She was denied the position, despite being the only internal applicant and fully qualified. 

Instead of hiring Genesis, management gave the position to a recent hire without informing him of the known dispute with the union. This was in blatant violation of the contract, which contains plain language around seniority-based internal hiring.

Ears to the Ground

Sensing that management was likely to deny her the position, members began organizing even before the official denial. Union officers, stewards, and activists in the department began regularly asking their manager about the position. Coworkers filled an “appreciations” white board in the break room with messages of support for Genesis.

When management finally denied Genesis the promotion, the stewards team organized quickly to gather 89 signatures from coworkers in just two days—representing practically every worker who was on-site during that period—demanding that management reverse the decision. Eight people presented the petition directly to our general manager. About twenty people packed the next staff meeting to demand an answer. We never got one.

Around this time, management pulled a dirty trick by quickly offering the position to a new worker who had joined the bargaining unit just days earlier, without fully informing him of the situation and without being transparent by reposting the position. 

Thanks to our effective stewards network, we had ears to the ground and found out about this immediately. We met with the person they hired. Once we explained the situation to him, he was immediately on board to support the campaign, feeling that management had used and betrayed him.

An Escalating Campaign

In January, the union launched the grievance process, along with a strategic pressure campaign, with our members quickly rallying around the effort. The union leadership and others created a series of escalating actions over the next five months. 

Broad involvement from the members was crucial, including many members wearing “Hire Genesis” buttons at work to raise awareness. The rank and file educated and agitated in the community and on social media around the campaign. We continued to circulate the internal petition, gaining the signatures of nearly every employee in the local, as well as a public petition, securing an additional 200 signatures from members of the community. We stood vigil outside the Step 2 grievance meeting, holding signs in support of our coworker, and amplified the issue with customers by brandishing protest signs and collecting signatures in the Hunger Mountain Co-op parking lot. Then in April, about a dozen union members marched on the general manager during a community meet-and-greet in the store.

Unity and Education Help Us Win

Despite being a relatively small local, we won this campaign because of the deep commitment of the members and the strength of our relationships with each other. Without that unity of purpose and commitment to keep showing up for five months straight, management’s hiring decision would likely have remained. Because so many members fought alongside Genesis, we had the flexibility to hold multiple, escalating actions. And we had a wide reach for educating ourselves and our community around the struggle, even if not everyone was able to attend every action. With different faces at each action, along with our unifying demand, it was clear that even the smaller demonstrations were representative of the will of the local as a whole.

In early May, backed into a corner by the clarity of the demand and the solidarity of the membership, management agreed to offer Genesis the production cook position, including back pay for the time she would have held the position, along with several other remedy requests.

While on the surface this fight seemed to revolve around a single person, members of our local recognized, through a concerted internal education process, that this injury to Genesis would be a threat to us as well, and acted accordingly. Not only did we win Genesis her rightful position, but we fought collectively to protect the integrity of our contract while strengthening our relationships and resolve, building confidence in our power as workers, and readying ourselves for the next struggle.