River Valley Co-op workers allege toxic workplace conditions, unjust firing

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Unionized workers at River Valley Co-Op are entering into what they say is a contentious bargaining session with the grocery chain’s management following staffers’ allegations of an unjust firing, inadequate pay, and a toxic workplace culture. 

Those are just the latest allegations that some co-op employees — unionized with United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1459 — have levied against management in recent months. In November, workers told The Shoestring that management began a dress-code crackdown focused on pins employees were wearing, including those with pro-Palestine messaging but also pins with workers’ pronouns on them. The store later walked back part of that policy, but employees say managers are still trying to discipline workers at the co-op’s Northampton and Easthampton locations.

According to a petition a group of employees published on Jan. 13, management fired Jack Stambaugh, a prepared foods shift leader at the Northampton location, due to a “dress code policy violation.” The petition said that under management’s guidelines, a pin Stambaugh wore was .75 inches larger than allowed and contained the letters “BDS” — a reference to the Boycott, Sanctions, Divestment movement seeking to hold Israel accountable for its occupation of Palestine.

“This employee increased morale in their department through their strong communication skills, adherence to the co-op principles, and their support for their ESL (English as a second language) coworkers,” read the petition. “Yet they were fired over a button which expressed their commitment to human rights.”

In their petition, workers said that cooperatives like River Valley Co-op have a long history of showing international solidarity and demonstrating social responsibility in their actions.

“Silencing and repressing workers and member-owners for following their moral compass sets a dangerous precedent and only escalates a political climate in which repression for standing up for human rights is becoming normalized,” the petition said.

In response to Stambaugh’s termination, employees began wearing pins at work that said “We Stand With Jack.” In response, staffers said that store management attempted to discipline those workers, arguing that their protest of their colleague’s treatment was not considered the type of “concerted activity” that is protected under federal labor law. 

However, union steward Katrina Jagelski said that during a Labor Management Committee meeting on Jan. 16, management rescinded their disciplinary stance on the pins after speaking with their lawyer. Jagelski told The Shoestring that a compromise was reached in the hopes of moving forward more quickly with bargaining to address larger issues at the two stores. 

Jagelski said that River Valley Co-Op has invited the law firm Sullivan & Hayes as legal support during the upcoming bargaining session. Jagelski said the co-op has used this firm for the last 12 years. 

This push for a bargaining session follows on the heels of worker complaints about issues ranging from management handing out small bonuses in what workers described as a financially successful year for the stores to a “shocking lack of LGBTQ support across the store.” Employees told The Shoestring that turnover was significant, with many current workers primarily having started within the past year.

Multiple employees expressed frustration at the co-op’s public facing image as compared to the actual treatment of staff on the floor. 

“They’re a profit-focused business just like everybody else,” Jagelski said, “but the public shops at the co-op because they think they’re helping support a local cooperative that’s good to workers.”

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This is not the first time co-op employees have raised this critique. 

In 2018, for example, Justin Cascio — a member-owner and former employee — wrote an open letter to River Valley Co-op member-owners contrasting the store’s outward public appearance  as “our friendly neighbor with progressive values” with employee allegations of mistreatment. These allegations included obstructing labor organizing and “a pattern of suspicious and antagonistic firings.” Cascio also noted that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration had levied $16,835 in penalties against the co-op in 2016 for four violations of safety standards the agency described as “serious.”

“Did more than 9,000 of us become part owners in just another retail shop, with no higher mission than to make money?” Cascio wrote. “Or did we join because we believe in a higher standard? I’ve tried to have these critical conversations with the people empowered to make change, but they’re not listening.”

A year prior to Cascio’s letter, River Valley Co-op and its employees’ union resolved a dispute over the store’s failure to pay workers for the time it took to ride a shuttle from the off-site parking lot where the co-op required them to park. According to reporting in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, that resolution required the intervention of federal mediators. Management and the union also agreed to reaffirm their support of concerted activity, the Gazette reported, after workers alleged that General Manager Rochelle Prunty tried to stop a shuttle driver from passing out leaflets to coworkers — an activity protected under federal labor law.

When The Shoestring reached out to Cascio for comment on the 2018 open letter, he said that as a more distant observer and member-owner, things still look the same to him. 

“Candidates for board elections are hand-selected, unreachable, and unaccountable, and remain so while they serve,” he said. “I still shop there but I hold no illusions any more that it’s run in a way that’s ‘better’ or more accountable than the Stop & Shop or Aldi.”

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Mona Shadi, a current store employee and union member, said that staff rarely get the opportunity to engage with the public to let them know about their working conditions.

“People think we are being honored, respected, and treated with dignity, but we are just treated as labor,” Shadi said. “When we want something we are silenced or met with policy … A lot of us rely on overtime to survive, and now there’s no overtime for January despite a record-breaking sales season.”

Shadi told The Shoestring that the co-op had a good financial year in 2024, but the bonus given to employees was only a $100 gift card to the River Valley Co-Op itself. 

“This is some Charles Dickens shit,” she said. “This is worse than Oliver Twist.”

However, Rochelle Prunty, the general manager of River Valley Co-Op, denied these claims. In an email to The Shoestring, she said that after opening its Easthampton location in 2021, there was a significant increase in sales but that parallel growth in expenses exceeded those sales. That meant that in both 2022 and 2023, the co-op posted more than $1 million in losses on their operations, she said. In 2024, the co-op posted a pre-tax net loss of $871,763, she said.

Those losses were expected, she added, as the co-op continues “growing into our expansion.”

“We are proud of what we have accomplished while staying true to our member-owners mission expanding support of local food producers, increasing employment opportunities, and supporting our communities through our services and community activities,” she said. “We have a tradition of giving each our employees each a $100 co-op gift card in December, we have done this despite operating at substantial losses in the last three years because it tends to be an extra expensive time of year for people, and we like to show appreciation of our employees with a little something extra at this time of year.”

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Overtime and bonuses were not the workers’ only complaints. Stambaugh told The Shoestring that leading up to their termination, they had multiple meetings with management and union staff during which as a transgender employee, they were repeatedly misgendered in disciplinary discussions. That’s an experience that two other transgender employees told The Shoestring they had experienced. 

“As a trans person working at the co-op it took several months to get gendered correctly,” Jagelski said. “I sent at least four emails to human resources, but it took that long for anything to take.”

Another transgender employee who asked to remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of her experiences told The Shoestring she never felt comfortable going to HR. An employee at the Easthampton store of over two years, she recently quit in early January, following Stambaugh’s termination. In a phone call with The Shoestring, she said a manager told her explicitly when she was hired that transphobia would not be tolerated under any circumstances. 

The employee said that months prior to her leaving the company, that same manager began a disciplinary conversation with her. She alleged that the manager told her she was in violation of dress code because people in the store had complained about being able to see the outline of her genitals while wearing leggings — attire the employee said was not prohibited by company policy or uncommon for other employees to wear on shift. She said that a subsequent meeting with management, union representatives, and HR led to management admitting that the dress code did not prohibit leggings but nevertheless telling her that her “genitals were exposed.” 

“It was a really painful conversation,” the employee said. “They were talking about my genitals being exposed like I was flashing people in the store … It was the most outwardly transphobic thing I have heard from management at any job over the past seven years. They told me multiple people had complained, which just made me feel unsafe in my workplace.”

In an email response to a question from The Shoestring regarding the co-op’s policies on LGBTQIA+ protections, Prunty said that “River Valley Co-op has worked in partnership with organizations that support LGBTQIA+ community members from the beginning.” 

“Our founders, our original members, and investors, then, as now include many families from the LGBTQIA+ community,” Prunty said. “We are committed to providing a welcoming workplace for our LGBTQIA+ employees, a welcoming store for our LGBTQIA+ customers and being a supportive partner for our LGBTQIA+ vendors and other businesses we work with. We remain as committed as ever to continuing all our DEI training requirements for our staff and expanding on them as needed, to maintaining gender neutral restrooms in all our facilities, to keeping pronouns on name tags, and we will continue to sponsor and participate in LGBTQIA+ community events.”

In response to allegations employees made, the co-op’s public relations representative, Anthony Cignoli, sent a statement that said the store does not share any information about specific employee issues. The statement said that the store does have “good policies for ensuring fair treatment,” noting that employees have union representation and that the co-op has a “good system for resolving issues” with the union when there are disagreements. 

“We know correct pronoun use is important, and our workplace culture has evolved over the last 17 years from no pronouns on name tags, to discussing the development of pronouns on name tags in weekly staff meetings, and including pronoun use as part of our required staff training,” the statement said. “We know people sometimes make mistakes, but we are committed to an inclusive workplace culture and invest significant time and resources toward this commitment.”

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Pro-Palestine advocates also continue to say they have seen a misalignment between stated values from River Valley Co-op leadership and actions taken by leadership. Those accusations come after member-owners overwhelmingly voted down a proposal to stop carrying Israeli products — an issue that store leaders campaigned heavily against. 

Jewish Voice for Peace, a nonprofit advocating for “peace and equality in Israel and Palestine,” recently submitted a letter to the River Valley Co-op board of directors after the group said leadership denied its request to table at the store. The letter says the group believes it has fully satisfied the co-op’s criteria for tabling and asks for the board to reconsider its decision. The group said that a “significant” number of its members are also co-op member owners and shoppers.

“According to the Board, advocacy for peace and equality in Israel and Palestine is ‘unwelcome and hurtful to many in our co-op community,’” Jewish Voice for Peace said in a press release Thursday. “We are disappointed that River Valley Co-op has chosen to silence Jewish voices for Palestinian solidarity, peace, and equality in Israel and Palestine … The ban on our advocacy at the co-op goes against the values the co-op claims to represent.”

In a statement, the co-op said that being a nonprofit does not automatically give a group the right to table at the co-op.

“Palestine/Israel issues are highly sensitive in our community and our co-op stores are not the forum for engaging in these discussions,” he said. “In the last year we have found that actions bringing these issues to our stores causes distress, anger, and alienation for many co-op members and shoppers as well as disruptions in our stores and for our employees.” 

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