238 Meijer workers in Ohio join UFCW after card-check vote

The 238 workers who voted to join UFCW Local 880 at Meijer’s Bainbridge store landed their win in a brand-new 159,000-square-foot supercenter built on the former Geauga Lake amusement park site. For Trader Joe’s crews watching grocery organizing from the sidelines, the message is plain: labor pressure is still showing up in individual stores where workers are focused on wages, benefits and whether management will treat them fairly.

UFCW said the employees at the Bainbridge, Ohio, location voted by card check on April 29 to join the local, and the new members said they wanted better wages, benefits and job security. The store sits at 7300 Aurora Road in Aurora, in Bainbridge Township, and Meijer said it opened there on May 6 as the company’s 59th store in Ohio. That makes the organizing win even more notable: it was not some legacy urban grocery site, but a newly opened flagship-sized store where workers moved quickly to establish representation.

The local’s reach helps explain why the vote mattered beyond one building. UFCW Local 880 says it represents more than 20,000 workers across Northeast Ohio and Western Pennsylvania, including grocery employees at Meijer, Giant Eagle, Dave’s and Heinen’s. A prior local account said Local 880 already represented 13 Meijer stores across northeastern Ohio, so the Bainbridge result added to an existing regional network rather than breaking into untouched labor territory.

For Trader Joe’s employees, that distinction matters. Trader Joe’s has only four unionized stores so far, starting with Hadley, Massachusetts, in 2022, and reporting in 2026 said none of those stores had secured a first bargaining agreement yet. Trader Joe’s United says its leadership is made up entirely of Trader Joe’s crew members, and the union is still writing contract proposals while helping other stores organize. That leaves a gap between winning recognition and converting that win into a contract workers can actually use.

The company’s labor record has also stayed under scrutiny. An unfair labor practice charge filed with the National Labor Relations Board in Chicago on May 21, 2025, was later closed after a withdrawal request was approved on September 17, 2025. Against that backdrop, the Meijer vote is a reminder that grocery organizing has not faded. It is still advancing one store, one ballot and one set of workplace grievances at a time, from Bainbridge Township to the Trader Joe’s shops still waiting for a first deal.