Workers at Bookmans Entertainment Exchange’s East location at Speedway and Wilmot Road have filed a petition for union representation with the National Labor Relations Board.
The workers at the used book and media store are seeking to be represented by the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Local 99, and the NLRB is expected to set an election date in the coming weeks, the union said.
The Bookmans workers would be the first in the bookstore industry in Arizona to unionize, amid a union movement at bookstores elsewhere, the UFCW said.
Bookmans, a Tucson mainstay since the 1970s, buys and sells used goods, including books, music, movies and games at the east-side store at 6230 E. Speedway and a second store at 4841 N. Stone Ave., where it recently consolidated inventory and staff from two now-closed local stores.
The company also has one store in Phoenix, one in Mesa and two in Flagstaff.
Bookmans president Sean Feeny said the company was aware of the petition but had no further comment on Monday.
Eleanor Hill, a department Supervisor at Bookmans East, said in a UFCW news release that the staff is seeking job security after the store’s entire marketing department was laid off without notice.
Another worker, Becca Light, said the company no longer offers fair and consistent raises, and has cut past benefits like banked holiday times, generous sick time and cash bonuses.
Employees of least a half-dozen individual Barnes & Noble stores have voted to unionize in the past year, with the UFCW or the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.
Other bookstores where employees have voted for union representation in recent years include Half Price Books and independent shops like Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C., Book Culture and Greenlight in New York City, and Savoy Bookshop & Café in Westerly, Rhode Island.
In 2022, concerned community member Michelle Teague asked that the Catawba County School Board remove 24 books from the district’s school libraries. Claiming that these books contained explicit content that she felt children should not be exposed to. Now these books as well as many more are being challenged in libraries across the country.
