Building Communist Cells at Trader Joe’s

Over the seven years I spent working at Trader Joe’s, I managed to recruit several coworkers and build the nucleus of communist cells at two stores. The key was to discuss politics with my coworkers at every opportunity. When someone had an issue with management, or when someone saw something in the news that they didn’t understand, I always put forward Marxist perspectives. In this way, I gained some political authority with my coworkers, who knew they could turn to me as a source of ideas. I recruited three people at a Trader Joe’s in the San Francisco Bay Area, including my own manager, who then helped arrange our work shifts in the most convenient way for the political discussions to continue.

In 2020, when they started calling us “essential workers,” and there was talk of unionizing and demanding hazard pay, suddenly I became the person to come to. By this time, I had moved to Minneapolis, working in a downtown store that was at ground zero of the George Floyd movement. The first person I talked to about politics told me they were a Marxist. I soon realized that almost every worker there described themselves as a communist. The most right-wing person among my coworkers was a social democrat. I took the opportunity to organize readings of the Marxist classics at work. When this store became the second Trader Joe’s in the country to organize a union drive, my coworkers asked me to lead the rally before the union vote. With patience and persistence, you can build a cell in any workplace where there are young workers watching the state of the world. You have to be smart about it, and not get yourself fired. But it’s probably a lot easier than you think.