By Anya Sostek - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
It's not easy being green, even for people who make a living doing it.
Just ask the workers of the East End Food Co-op, who find themselves embroiled in two competing unionization drives at the Point Breeze market that sells organic and environmentally friendly food and health products.
Since May, several workers at the member-owned store have been organizing to join the International Workers of the World, hoping that forming a union will give them leverage against management. Then again, defining "management'' isn't that easy to do at a co-op since everyone, at least theoretically, has a say in how things are run.
Even so, Stacey Clampitt is helping to organize the IWW drive because, the 24-year-old Wilkinsburg resident says, "We feel that we don't really have enough power over our workplace. We would like to be able to hold management accountable, to have checks and balances."
Ms. Clampitt said that workers would like to see better health-care benefits, less turnover and a living wage -- the current starting salary is $6.50 per hour, though management recently promised to raise it to $7 per hour, said Ms. Clampitt.
But in late June, as more and more workers signed cards indicating their desire to join the Wobblies, as members of the IWW are often called, at least one employee became uneasy.
Dan Denlinger, the store's supplement buyer, decided to start his own union as an alternative to the IWW.
The idea came to him in a sudden brainstorm, he said. "Bam, it just exploded like a new star."
Mr. Denlinger, 52, of North Point Breeze, had worked in management at the co-op for five weeks, but resigned his management position shortly before starting the union.
"The United Co-operative Workers is a concept for a genuinely grass-roots, and hence truly radical [union], as well as [a] low-cost union alternative," he wrote in a position paper.
Mr. Denlinger opposed the higher dues of the IWW -- a sliding scale ranging from $6 to $18 per month -- and worried that the co-op workers would lose their independence if they affiliated with another group.
Plus, he just had a bad feeling about the whole thing.
"My response here is essentially intuitive," he said. "Maybe it's because I'm reading that book by Gavin de Becker, 'The Gift of Fear,' but my intuition is saying 'No, no, no ... danger.' "
By July 6, a majority of the approximately 50 co-op workers signed cards indicating their desire to join the IWW -- a count verified by the Thomas Merton Center.
The general manager of the co-op, Rob Baran, declined to recognize the card check results, opting instead to hold a secret ballot election, said Ms. Clampitt.
Mike Q. Roth, president of the co-op's board, said that the board had decided to leave all decisions about the unionization drives to Mr. Baran, who could not be reached for comment.
Meanwhile, Mr. Denlinger is trying to collect signature cards from 30 percent of the workers in order to get his union onto the secret ballot as well. He said that while no formal deadline has been set, he believes that the issue will be resolved by the end of the month.
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PITTSBURGH, PA—A clear majority of workers have chosen union representation at the East End Food Co-op, Pittsburgh’s only member-owned natural and organic food market. The East End Food Co-op Workers Committee, affiliated with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), held an independent union authorization card count after their employer refused to accept the workers’ signed cards as democratic proof of union support. The Thomas Merton Center, a well-known and respected peace and social justice organization since 1972, facilitated the card count and verified the results on July 6, 2006. 
For the third time since 1993, workers at the 50-employee East End Food Co-op are mounting a drive to join the Industrial Workers of the World union. This time around, they’ve received a less-negative reaction from management — only to see their efforts stymied in a novel way.
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