Sprouts: A Spoiled Addition to Our Community 🥦

Sprouts Farmers Market: A Bad Neighbor for Our Community

Sprouts Farmers Market likes to present itself as a responsible, community-focused grocer. But when you look closely at how the company expands into new communities, a very different picture emerges — one that should concern local residents, workers, and elected officials alike.

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Sprouts’ Expansion Model Hurts Local Workers

Across multiple projects, Sprouts has relied on contractors that do not prioritize local hiring and that pay wages below established area standards. That choice has real consequences:

  • Local tradespeople lose job opportunities
  • Area wage standards are undermined
  • Money that should circulate locally is pulled out of the community

Instead of creating good, family-sustaining jobs, Sprouts’ approach contributes to a race to the bottom that hurts working families and weakens local economies.

What you can do –> click here to Tell Sprouts to Be a Good Neighbor or Stay Out of Our Community

Take a stand and join us in letting Sprouts know we will not stand for this bad behavior in our community today. 

Custom Fabrication and Fire Life Safety

In New Jersey and Delaware, we’ve been making headway on the regulations to support custom fabrication and fire life safety. These aren’t abstract policy battles. They mean real hours for our members, safer buildings for our families, and stronger local economies. With mechanical rack systems and other forms of modularization becoming standard practice, installations are not only more efficient but also safer on-site. However, technology can’t be allowed to outpace labor standards. Our laws must evolve to ensure that work fabricated in our shops—by trained union members—is recognized, protected, and compensated fairly. This isn’t just about fairness, it’s about keeping jobs local, ensuring safety for the public, and protecting Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey contractors from being undercut by out-of-state or overseas shops. 

We’ve taken that message directly to decision-makers. Republican and Democratic legislators alike have walked our shops, seen our apprentices in action, and learned what separates our work from the rest. When they see the training, the professionalism, and the pride for themselves—it moves the needle. It turns conversations into commitments and skeptics into allies. 

Most recently, Local 19 and Local 12 out of western Pennsylvania teamed up with signatory contractor SSM for a site tour of the company’s Pittsburgh shop with a group of Republican state legislators. Led by Senator Devlin Robinson and several State Representatives in the Pittsburgh area, the group saw firsthand the skill and knowledge it takes to fabricate sheet metal ductwork of all shapes and sizes. The tour highlighted why custom fabrication must be included in prevailing wage rates for public projects. It was more than a tour—it was a lesson in what’s at stake when policy and practice meet.

Click here to watch our video and learn more about the custom fabrication loophole threatening Pennsylvania’s working families.