Bay Area

Unsatisfied with Wages, Working Conditions, Urban Ore Workers Try to Unionize

Workers at Berkeley’s popular salvaged goods store, Urban Ore, filed a petition to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) stating their intention to form a union through the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) on February 2.

Published

2 years ago

February 21, 2023

Oakland Post

A collection of second hand second hand bathtubs, sinks and windows for sale at Urban Ore, a large popular salvaged goods store in Berkeley. Photo on February 14 by Zack Haber.

By Zack Haber

That same day, an Instagram account associated with the union drive posted a statement voicing support for the store and its mission of stopping waste while also pushing for higher wages and scheduling reform for workers.

“We are proud to work at Urban Ore, and we want to make it even better,” reads the statement. “Urban Ore allows its customers a more sustainable alternative for shopping, and we want it to provide more sustainable jobs.”

On February 5, workers held a rally to support their union drive outside of the store. Members of East Bay DSA and several unions, such as ILWU, Bay Area TANC, and the National Union of Health Care Workers, accompanied the workers.

The NLRB will soon hold a secret ballot election for the store’s 25 union eligible employees. If a majority votes to approve the union, it will be officially recognized.

Benno Giammarinaro, who works in Urban Ore’s merchandise receiving department, said he’s “definitely optimistic” employees will secure enough ‘yes’ votes to unionize. As part of their union petition filing, a majority of the store’s employees have already submitted signed cards indicating a desire to form a union.

Mary Van Deventer told this reporter that she and fellow Urban Ore co-owner Dan Knapp would not do an interview. She did, however, e-mail a written statement from the store saying it “respects the rights of its employees to unionize if that is what a majority desire.”

Van Deventer’s statement also said the company offers “very competitive pay.” Urban Ore pays its non-managerial staff a base wage of $13.60 an hour, which is less than Berkeley’s minimum wage of $16.99. But these employees also get fluctuating additional wages as a portion of the store’s gross income goes to them.

In January, this proportion was raised from 10% to 15%. This year the owners estimate the income share to provide a $9.25 boost to the base wage, meaning that, in total, they expect workers to make around $22.85 per hour.

Urban Ore worker Sarah Mossler said that she’s not against income-sharing, but that the current model often leaves her worried about whether or not she can pay her bills.

“I’d be fine with it if we had a stable, minimum living base wage,” said Mossler. “But it’s been incredibly stressful for me because my rent is the same every month while my paychecks aren’t.”

The owners describe the income-share as an “incentive” for workers, but Giammarinaro thinks the current model “puts the risk of the business on the workers,” as factors beyond their control, such as the weather, affect sales.

“If there’s a rainy week,” he said, “merchandise gets damaged, and people don’t come out as much. This means we make several dollars an hour less than usual.”

Ultimately workers feel that their paychecks, even with income-sharing, make living in the Bay Area difficult, and that the wage rate has contributed to high employee turnover.

“We are struggling to afford living in the community that we love,” reads the Urban Ore worker statement on Instagram. “This has created a chronic understaffing problem.”

According to Giammarinaro, 19 Urban Ore employees have left since he first started working there in May of 2021. Currently, the store has 31 workers employed below the senior management level.

Giammarinaro feels the company is in a good position to raise wages to address the turnover as sales have surged since COVID started. The store, which sells mostly donated goods like doors, furniture, appliances and media, has taken in about $7 million in the last two years.

In a letter that Operations Manager Max Wechsler sent to employees this year announcing the income-share percentage rate increase, he stated that, except for its mortgage, Urban Ore is “debt-free.”

Both owners and workers agree that working at Urban Ore is physically demanding. In their statement, the owners describe the jobs as “physical work for all staff,” and that “three tons of goods” enter the store each day.

For most workers, this means lots of lifting. Giammarinaro often finds himself exhausted, saying “almost every day I immediately come home and plop on my bed after work.” Mossler thinks addressing understaffing would make doing such lifting safer.

“When you’re lifting something designed for lots of people to lift,” she said, “and you’re on your own, it’s dangerous.”

Giammarinaro and Mossler both said that in addition to addressing wages and understaffing, they want a union in order to have a say in how the business is run. Recently, Mossler decided to step down from a position in management she had been promoted to in order to be eligible to be a part of a potential Urban Ore union.

While she had taken the management position with the goal of influencing the business and helping co-workers, she didn’t find that method effective.

“I took the job as a manager because I thought that was the way to make the place better and advocate for the people I work with,” she said, “but I quickly saw that I just got more facetime with people that didn’t hear my ideas or take them seriously.”

According to Giammarinaro, one thing workers specifically want is time set aside for cleaning the store. Currently, all in-store cleaning has to be done during business hours, which makes it difficult to maintain the store.

“People could really clean, organize merchandise, and make things look nice if the store could close early once every few weeks, or if people could come in a bit early sometimes,” he said.

In recent years, workers have objected to the manner in which Urban Ore has terminated certain employees. Last summer, 15 workers signed a statement which called for a terminated worker to be rehired. The letter stated the worker had faced “mistreatment” and that their absence would “have a significant impact on revenue, workloads and organizing.”

While that employee was never rehired, workers, like Mossler, want a ‘just cause’ clause in their contract to make it so owners have to give a reason for terminating an employee in the future. Currently, Urban Ore, like all California businesses that don’t have contracts requiring otherwise, can terminate employees “at-will” without giving a reason.

“We think that the at-will employment can rear its ugly head,” said Mossler.

In their e-mail, Urban Ore’s owners stated that this year they are “working toward transitioning to become a worker-owned cooperative,” a transition they have spoken about in the press since 2017.

According to Giammarinaro, workers support such an idea but want to have a voice, through a union, in how a potential cooperative could be structured.

“We agree with a worker-owned cooperative model and thinking unionizing first will help,” he said. “We don’t think we need a coop to start making workplace democracy.”

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Oakland Post: Week of March 5 – 11, 2025

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of March 5 – 11, 2025

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1 week ago

March 7, 2025

Oakland Post

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Undocumented Workers Are Struggling to Feed Themselves. Slashed Budgets and New Immigration Policies Bring Fresh Challenges

Founded more than 20 years ago, Street Level Health Project started with a handful of nurses and volunteers visiting day laborer sites in East Oakland to provide medical assistance and other resources to newly arrived immigrants. They quickly spotted symptoms common among day laborers: nausea, fatigue, and headaches. Sitting in the sun for hours waiting for work is typical. Once on a job, some men shared incidents of nearly passing out while working. Volunteer nurses also noticed signs of hunger among the men, with some going days without eating a proper meal.

Published

2 weeks ago

March 4, 2025

Oakland Post

Day laborer zone sites are scattered across several streets in East Oakland, California. The sites allow workers to find temporary jobs in skilled labor such as construction, landscaping, and agriculture. Photo by Magaly Muñoz.

By Magaly Muñoz

Up and down the streets of the Fruitvale neighborhood in Oakland, immigrant workers head to empty parking lots and street corners waiting for a job. Some are as young as 14 and as old as 60.

Diego, a man in his late thirties, is a construction worker who arrived in the United States nine months ago. He, like many of the men standing beside him at the day laborer site, came to the U.S. in the hopes of providing a new life for his family. Now, Diego and other immigrants are worried as threats of deportation increase from the Trump administration.

Also worried are organizations such as Street Level Health Project, an Oakland-based nonprofit dedicated to providing access to health care and basic services to these laborers.

Street Level Health Project’s funding primarily comes from federal and local grants, These are in jeopardy because of city budget constraints and proposed cuts to federal social service dollars.

Already, the nonprofit’s local funding has been cut. The City of Oakland decreased one of the organization’s grants by $35,000 in one of its latest rounds of budget cuts, with city officials citing a looming budget deficit.

“Our primary day laborer program funding right now is secured, but we do have concerns in this next budget cycle if it will continue to be secured, given [the budget shortfall], and the recent cut to 13 community grants across the city,” said Executive Director Gabriela Galicia.

“We’re the safety net to the safety net,” said Galicia. As Oakland’s sole organization devoted to helping undocumented workers, Street Level is often tasked with “picking up the leftovers” for groups that provide resources to the larger immigrant or underserved communities, she added. Now, that mission is under threat.

Level Health Project is a nonprofit organization in East Oakland that provides health and employment resources for immigrant day laborers and their families. The staff upped their efforts to provide information about immigration rights in the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency. Photo by Magaly Muñoz.

At day laborer sites in East Oakland, several workers said that they often skip buying groceries or meals for themselves in order to save money for rent or other necessities.

Diego, who like others interviewed for this story asked to not share his full name because of his undocumented status, said he’s lucky if he makes $300 a week. He said that is enough to pay for the small room he and his son rent in the Fruitvale – but not enough to feed them both. Diego said that he will sometimes go days without food.

The family Diego rents from is more fortunate, he said, because they’re able to afford meat and rice. At times, Diego said, it’s hard to ignore the savory smell that finds its way to his bedroom. Diego tells his son to look away from his landlord’s table to avoid feeling envious about what they cannot buy themselves.

“It’s hard because I know there’s food at the store, but there’s never enough [money] to buy it,” Diego said. “We barely have enough to pay our rent every month.”

On top of paying for the basics here in the U.S., day laborers also face pressure to support relatives in their home countries.

Pedro, interviewed on his BART ride home after an unsuccessful day of trying to find work in East Oakland, said his family in Guatemala regularly goes days without eating because he can’t make enough money in the Bay Area to send home to them.

“A lot of [day laborers] have their families back in [Latin America], making it harder to keep up with our needs here,” Pedro said. Some days he said the only thing he eats is the fruit that some local organizations hand out to workers like him.

Street Level Health Project is providing weekly grocery bags to immigrant day laborers and their families to address the growing need for food in the community. Photo by Magaly Muñoz.

Bracing for bigger challenges

Before the pandemic, Street Level Health Project had a hot meal lunch program at their central office in the Fruitvale, where the organization provided meals twice a week for over 50 people. The organization also had a hot meal breakfast program where they prepared 50 to 90 meals, three times a week.

Understanding the food insecurity that many day laborers face, the project launched a food distribution program in 2011, distributing nearly 70 bags of groceries weekly. Thanks to additional funding, they were able to increase that to 150 food bags a week during the pandemic.

In recent years, Street Level Health Project reduced its weekly grocery distribution back to 70 bags and cut its hot meal program completely. Galicia, the director, said that’s because of the end of COVID-19 funding and staffing reductions.

Street Level Health Project also receives regular donations from the Alameda County Food Bank, but Galicia said it has not been enough to restore the food distribution program to what it was during the pandemic.

Currently, Street Level has a $100,000 grant from the city of Oakland to provide wrap-around services for day laborers, such as getting jobs for the workers, providing assistance with CalFresh and MediCal applications, and referring people to legal aid or immigration assistance. Galicia said that funding is barely enough to do the amount of work that the city expects.

Meanwhile, the $35,000 cut in funding has impacted the organization’s workers’ rights outreach and education services, she said.

The Oakland Post tried reaching out to city and county officials several times for comment but did not get a response.

Galicia fears city leaders will make even harsher cuts during the upcoming budget cycle this spring to balance a $130 million shortfall. Last year, Oakland cut funding for public safety, arts and culture programs, and 13 other nonprofits that serve the city’s most vulnerable populations.

Yet the budget concerns don’t stop with local government.

In the wake of Trump 2.0, organizations across the country are handing out “red cards” with the rights that immigrants should be aware of when encountering immigration officers. Photo by Magaly Muñoz.

Since President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, immigrant communities and the organizations that serve them have been in crisis mode.

Trump, who ran on a promise to deport millions of immigrants, has signed executive orders to stop birthright citizenship, shipped migrants to Guantanamo Bay, and attempted to freeze federal funding to social programs. Undocumented residents are increasingly anxious that their families might get separated.

Galicia said this is the time for local and state governments to invest in their organizations’ staff and direct resources, not take them away, from the people on the frontlines.

“I think that it’s just as important that funders are able to give to our teams, not just for the community but because the people doing the work have to be well, and we need ample resources to be able to do this work to support our community,” Galicia said.

For Pedro, the day laborer in Oakland, the combination of less support from nonprofits like Street Level Health Project, along with fear raised by the Trump administration’s deportation threats, has left him fearful. He is not alone, he said. He has noticed fewer day laborers showing up to their usual spots. Pedro said he himself fears encountering an immigration officer on his way to work.

“We don’t want to leave our homes, but at the same time, if we don’t go outside, we don’t work,” he said. “If we don’t work, we can’t afford to live.”

Oakland Post reporter Magaly Muñoz produced this story as part of a series as a 2024 USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism Data Fellow and Engagement Grantee.