Hampden MOM's Workers Say Union Store Gets Less Pay, Fewer Holidays

The paycheck math at MOM's Organic Market in Hampden is specific: $2 extra per hour on weekends, and a $5-per-hour premium on five holidays, those being New Year's Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, July 4, Labor Day, and Christmas. That is what roughly 90 workers at the Rotunda store secured when their collective bargaining agreement was ratified in September 2023. It was, at the time, a win for the first MOM's location in the country to unionize.

About 15 months later, MOM's handed its non-union stores a $4-per-hour weekend boost and expanded the same $5 holiday premium to nine holidays. The Hampden workers received neither.

The reason traces to a single missing clause. During the original contract negotiations, MOM's lawyers rejected what labor attorneys call a "me too" provision, which would have required the company to extend any favorable economic benefit offered at one location to union stores as well. Former employees who spoke publicly said MOM's brought three lawyers to the negotiating table "at all times," and blocked the clause from the final agreement. Without it, MOM's was legally free to improve pay at non-union locations while Hampden's contract held firm.

"Ask him, 'Why is one of your top-performing stores and one of the busiest stores in the company making the same pay as one of the slowest stores in the company, White Marsh, and at the same time not getting the same level of benefits that store gets?'" a former MOM's employee said, directing the challenge at founder and CEO Scott Nash.

That former staffer, along with others, is speaking out because current workers cannot. The Hampden contract's no-strike/no-lockout language puts employees at risk of termination if they publicly criticize conditions at the store. After the pay disparity drew complaints, MOM's raised the Hampden starting wage to $17 per hour, narrowing one gap. The weekend and holiday differentials remain.

The Hampden store is one of only two unionized MOM's locations in a chain of roughly two dozen stores across several states and the District of Columbia. The College Park location is the other. The chain markets itself on environmental and social responsibility, which is part of why the 2022 unionization vote at Hampden surprised some shoppers. That brand identity now sits uncomfortably alongside a pay structure where the chain's busiest, top-performing union store earns less on weekends and holidays than slower non-union counterparts.

For Hampden shoppers accustomed to paying premium prices for organic groceries on the premise that MOM's treats workers well, the arithmetic is uncomfortable. A cashier at the Rotunda working a full weekend shift under the current contract earns $2 per hour less than a counterpart at a non-union MOM's location doing the same work.

The Hampden contract is set to expire later this year. Whether MOM's agrees to a "me too" clause in the next round of bargaining will answer the question that former workers are now putting directly to Scott Nash.