Barnes & Noble workers at three Big Apple stores unionized on Thursday becoming the first in the US to do so, according to the union representing them.
After a two-year organizing battle, some 200 sales clerks, baristas, maintenance and other workers inked three-year contracts with the retailer at its Union Square flagship in Manhattan, its Upper West Side location on West 82nd Street and its Brooklyn store in Park Slope.
The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union now represents three of the five stores in NYC. Another four outside of New York have organized as well.
Protests were held last year at the Union Square location, which also serves as the corporate headquarters.
Privately held Barnes & Noble, which operates some 600 stores nationwide, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“When we started organizing, we were making minimum wage in unacceptable work conditions,” according to a statement by senior bookseller, Aaron Lascano, who works at the Union Square location. “Now we’re looking forward to finally having guaranteed raises, excellent union health care coverage, protections from layoffs and stores closure.”
Each store has a separate contract, but their pay and many benefits are the same.
Wages will increase to a minimum of $23 to $25 per hour for new hires, depending on the position, by the end of the contracts, according to RWDSU.
Some roles, including a cafe team expert who makes specialty drinks, might pay as much as $29 per hour,” according to RWDSU spokesperson Chelsea Connor.
During organizing, which management pushed back against, workers’ pay was increased by $4 per hour to about $20, Connor added.
Other benefits include worker safety issues – that go beyond New York’s Retail Worker Safety Act which went into effect on March 3 – including stools for workers to sit on and paid car service for employees who work overnight shifts handling inventory.
The RWSA only requires employers to provide panic buttons and two training sessions on how to handle unruly customers. The buttons allow workers to reach 911 responders with a device they wear or on a mobile device.
Barnes & Noble workers will also get a new breakroom and job security if a store closes or relocates.
The two stores in the city that have not organized are at 555 Fifth Ave. in Midtown Manhattan and at 194 Atlantic Ave. in Brooklyn.
Four stores outside of New York have also organized and one in Bloomington, Ill. is poised to ratify a contract on Saturday, according to RWDSA.
Barnes & Noble chief executive James Daunt, who ran UK-based Waterstones book chain before he was tapped to run B&N in 2019, has spearheaded a growth strategy that has expanded the number of stores and revamped and modernized them.
The 128-year-old chain had been in a freefall.
“It was going through a prolonged period of decline in both revenues and profits — for a decade at least,” Daunt told The Post in 2021. “Two years in, the team has halted the decline and now has a base from which to grow revenues and profit.”
The company, previously led by the late retailer Len Riggio, was taken private in 2019 in a $683 million deal by Elliott Management, the activist hedge fund led by billionaire Paul Singer.
