A worker rings up customers at the Plant Masters booth at the Columbia Heights FRESHFARM farmers market in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington D.C., on May 15, 2021.This year, workers from GrowNYC and FRESHFARM, two sustainable food access nonprofits in New York City and the Washington, D.C. metro area respectively, formed unions.
In New York City, it all began last spring, with a few informal conversations during a period of organizational turmoil at GrowNYC, a nonprofit that organizes about 70 “Greenmarket” farmers markets, the city’s composting program, food box programs sourced from local farms in lower-income areas, educational programs about zero waste, community gardens, and more.
GrowNYC’s jobs aren’t easy. Farmers market workers set up and break down tents, manage the EBT “food stamp” system and ensure the busy markets run smoothly, sometimes working 12-hour days. Compost drivers wake up at dawn to navigate the notoriously difficult streets of New York City. “We are workers who are providing essential services to the city,” Avery Hotchkiss, a compost site coordinator who was involved in the early stages of the unionization process, told. “And we are receiving city money to provide essential services. It’s easy to look at MTA workers, or sanitation workers who are doing really similar stuff and [if you look at] the benefits and wages that they have compared to what we have, it’s very easy to see we’re being exploited.
In addition to discussing exploitation, some workers talked about how management lacked an understanding of day-to-day realities on the ground, a problem typical of many hierarchical organizations. Others lamented their seasonal or part-time status, and some sought more job training and clearer protocols related to security and safety issues at farmers markets. “Some people have the opinion that it’s not going to be useful to have police [at the markets].