Workers at Shelf Life Books in Richmond, Va., have joined the United Food & Commercial Workers Local (UFCW) 400 Union, making them the first booksellers in the city to unionize.
All five eligible workers at the at the store, located at 2913 W. Cary Street, signed union authorization cards in support of the effort, according to the UFCW, and the store's owners, Chris and Berkley McDaniel, voluntarily recognized the union. Contract negotiations, the union added, will begin later this week.
“We’re proud to be the first booksellers in Richmond to unionize,” the Shelf Life organizing committee said in a statement. “As we look forward to negotiating our first union contract, we won’t be starting from scratch thanks to the work of our union siblings at Politics and Prose and Solid State Books, who have negotiated groundbreaking contracts that inspired us to unionize in the first place.”
The shop is the latest to organize in a series of labor efforts across many sectors of the book business in recent years, but especially in bookselling. Other booksellers in the Southeast have unionized with the UCFW in recent years, including Politics & Prose and Solid State Books, both in Washington, D.C. The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union has also been a major player in the unionization of booksellers, including leading successful organizing efforts at Greenlight Bookstore and McNally Jackson and at various Barnes & Noble locations across the country.
