 |
|
| Shelf Life Books employees (from left) Smokey Powers, Neda Massalha, Athena Palmer, James de la Rama. | |
The staff of Shelf Life Books, Richmond, Va., has decided to form a union, and after all five booksellers signed union authorization cards, management chose voluntarily to recognize the union. Negotiations with management on a contract will begin later this week, the union said.
The union is affiliated with United Food & Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 400, which represents 35,000 workers in the grocery, retail, health care, food processing, service, and other businesses in Maryland, Virginia, Washington, D.C., West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
The workers' organizing committee said: "We're proud to be the first booksellers in Richmond to unionize. As we look forward to negotiating our first union contract, we won't be starting from scratch thanks to the work of our union siblings at Politics and Prose and Solid State Books, who have negotiated groundbreaking contracts that inspired us to unionize in the first place."
Shelf Life co-owner Berkley McDaniel told Richmond BizSense that the store welcomes the union, saying, "We want Shelf Life Books to radiate positive energy, both internally among staff and externally in the community. We look forward to working through the union to create the best possible environment for upholding our values."
Shelf Life Books was originally a used bookstore called Chop Suey. In 2021, the store was bought by Chris and Berkley McDaniel, who changed its name a year ago. It has one level of new books and five rooms of used books.