Last Monday, unionized Seminary Co-op Bookstore booksellers picketed outside the bookstore on South Woodlawn Avenue, gathering signatures in support of their demand for living wages ahead of their next negotiation—marking 15 months without a revised contract.
The workers at the Seminary Co-op Bookstore and 57th Street Books began organizing after multiple failed attempts at negotiating a wage increase, according to the Hyde Park Herald, and after 15 months, in May 2024, they announced the newly formed Seminary Co-op Booksellers Union (SCBU), the only booksellers’ union in Chicago.
Since its founding, the SCBU’s main demand has been a living wage. According to MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, a single adult in Chicago with no dependents would need to make around $25 per hour to cover their basic needs. Currently, bookseller Findlay McCarthy earns $18.90 an hour, and some of her coworkers make $17.60 or less.
“We’re really trying to get our wages to cover rent and food, because it’s really shameful that I work full-time here and I’m eating myself out of house and home,” McCarthy said.
In June this year, SCBU members stopped working for an hour, citing management’s failure to come to an agreement that would “match our priorities for a living wage,” bookseller Elizabeth Pence told the Hyde Park Herald.
In an email to the Maroon, Kevin Bendle, the bookstores’ executive director, wrote that management “genuinely value[s] our booksellers and are committed to providing fair wages, benefits, and employment conditions that compensate employees appropriately for their work.”
While the Seminary Co-op Bookstores are not directly affiliated with the University, its board of directors includes several UChicago administrators and faculty members, and the University owns the Woodlawn Avenue building that houses the Co-op.
SCBU is also demanding that the Co-op management and the board terminate their employment of attorney Jenny Goltz, who is representing the bookstores in contract negotiations.
Goltz, who specializes in labor and employment law in Chicago, previously represented Northwestern University in a lawsuit filed in 2014 by a university police officer accusing the university of sexual harassment and gender discrimination.
The union is also requesting that management provide financial information from its previous fiscal year before the next negotiation meeting.
“We really like it here. We want what is best for the stores,” McCarthy said. “A big part of what is best for the stores is compensating the people who know the most about them and do the most work for them.”
