Workers at Lake Champlain Chocolates push to unionize

Theo Wells-Spackman is a Report for America corps member who reports for VTDigger.

A group of employees at Lake Champlain Chocolates is pushing to unionize, saying they want better compensation and benefits, as well as changes to the company’s workplace environment. 

Workers at the company will vote Nov. 17 on whether to accept representation, according to Curtis Clough, president of the Vermont-based branch of the Teamsters union. The office also represents local groups of UPS and University of Vermont Medical Center employees, among other bargaining units.

Family-owned Lake Champlain Chocolates, which employs 108 people in Vermont, was founded in Burlington in 1983.

According to a Teamsters filing with the National Labor Relations Board last month, the proposed bargaining unit would comprise 34 members. At least 30% of the proposed unit must support such an election petition before it can be filed, and a simple majority is needed to accept representation.

Nic Smith, who works in Lake Champlain Chocolates’ Williston factory and has been centrally involved in the push for unionization, said there had been “whispers” of such a move since he joined the company in 2022. The proposed bargaining unit would include production and packaging workers, as well as the shipping and receiving team, he said.

Company leadership does not support the move, said President Eric Lampman in an emailed statement Monday. Staff are already “key stakeholders” at the company and have the opportunity to voice concerns through an employee council, among other channels, he said.

“We simply believe a union is not right for Lake Champlain Chocolates at this time,” Lampman said. Such a move “would change the culture of the company,” he added.

Smith, a 35-year-old Burlington resident, said economic concerns were central for him. An internal survey conducted recently among staff showed that pay even for a number of long-serving staff fell below area cost-of-living benchmarks produced by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he said. (For a single adult in Chittenden County, that calculation comes out to $27.50 per hour.)

Healthcare coverage was also a concern for Smith and fellow employees, he added. The cost of care is often difficult for employees to manage, he said, with coworkers reporting tough decisions between medical needs and rent or other bills.

“We’re told that’s the best that they can do,” Smith said of the company’s healthcare package options. “It seems unlikely.”

Lake Champlain Chocolates’ annual wage increases have exceeded both inflation and revenue growth over the past nine years, Lampman said. Compensation for particular positions is determined by “the level of responsibility and experience required by the role,” rather than primarily by tenure, he said.

A recent audit of the company’s benefits — which include full dental and partial vision plan coverage, as well as paid parental leave and “competitive” healthcare coverage options — indicated that the candymaker compared favorably with other similar-sized businesses, Lampman added.

Smith also said workers wanted a stronger voice in shaping the workplace environment. Efforts to raise concerns with leadership about staff-management dynamics via the employee council had not been productive, he said.

In his statement, Lampman said the company was “committed to promoting a work environment that fosters communication, productivity, creativity, teamwork, and employee engagement.”

This proposed bargaining unit wouldn’t include all the staff who initially sought representation.  Brie Sheridan, a retail employee who was involved in the push for unionization, said that the retail team had been siloed. Smith said the split, which was agreed upon by Teamsters leadership and a group of staff, made sense because he believed the needs of retail employees differed from the manufacturing and shipping teams.

For Sheridan, 27, that’s been a source of frustration. He and his colleagues in retail had similar concerns about healthcare coverage and compensation falling short of the area’s ever-increasing cost pressures.

Sheridan did not say whether the retail team would seek separate representation.

Company leadership has pushed back against the unionization effort in communications to employees, including at several meetings where Lampman spoke about the subject, emails to staff obtained by VTDigger indicate.

“I’m unconvinced our employees would benefit from this structure. I do not think you need to pay dues to hire a third party to be treated fairly here,” Lampman said, according to a circulated copy of his remarks.

Added costs for both the company and its employees as a result of unionization, he said, could “be diverted from supporting staff.”

Smith expressed relative confidence about the vote later this month. But either way, he said, the process has brought attention to critical employee welfare issues.

“I think that this is an eye-opening situation, regardless of the outcome,” he said.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Workers at Lake Champlain Chocolates push to unionize.