Union Kitchen management fired one of the store’s lead union organizers a little over a week ago. It marks the latest incident workers characterize as retaliation since announcing their intention to form a union.

The food accelerator’s CEO, Cullen Gilchrist, says that “nothing has changed at Union Kitchen as a result of folks trying to organize a union.” However, Gilchrist acknowledges that he does “not think that a union will be beneficial to our employees.”

While three retail locations initially announced their union drive, now all five active Union Kitchen Grocery stores will be a part of the union election. The election will take place via mail-in ballot beginning on March 8, according to an agreement reached between Union Kitchen management and United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400, which is petitioning to be the collective bargaining agent for the workers.

Rob Ballock was one of two employees leading the unionization effort who received disciplinary notices. These notices came shortly after workers told management in late January that they were seeking union recognition for better wages and to have more of a say in workplace conditions.

Ballock’s disciplinary notices revolved around arriving late for his shift, and he says it was the first time he or his co-workers had ever seen these notices in practice. Before the union drive, he says, the store’s culture was understanding about punctuality.

“If you’re going to be five minutes late because the Metro is not running on time or whatever, it was common courtesy to shoot a text saying ‘Hey, I’m going to be late,’ but it was never any bigger issue than a 30-second conversation,” says Ballock. He drives to work, which can be unpredictable with traffic and construction, and says if he’s going to be less than a few minutes late, he’d rather not text and drive.

“But after we went public [with the union], it was a, ‘If you don’t send the message and you show up late, you will be fired’ was the message that was conveyed to me and to several of my co-workers,” says Ballock.

However, on the day he was fired, he says, he arrived for his shift on time. Screenshots Ballock provided to DCist show that he clocked in that Friday at 7:15 a.m., which is the precise time his shift was slated to start.

Ballock says his manager pulled him aside and said that they had already discussed that “being on time is late” and fired him. Ballock was shocked — he says he had showed up early to all of his shifts following the disciplinary notices and otherwise went out of his way to be an exemplary employee.

“I followed what the official company policy is and still managed to get fired for it,” says Ballock. “If it looks like retaliation and smells like retaliation, then I have no reason to argue otherwise.”

Gilchrist, Union Kitchen’s CEO, declined to comment on whether Ballock had been fired from his role or any details of his account, citing company policy not to discuss individual employees. Gilchrist denied that Union Kitchen has changed any of its policies or started to enforce them more strictly since the union drive began.

“The idea that there’s some nefarious conspiracy going on, I think it’s pretty silly, but I understand that maybe is the playbook that likes to be called in these sorts of situations,” Gilchrist says.

Ballock has filed an unfair labor practices charge against Union Kitchen at the National Labor Relations Board and is fighting to get his job back. (Federal law states that people cannot be fired or otherwise penalized for engaging in union organizing.) He is an at-will employee, meaning he can be fired by management at any time, but one of the union’s goals is to change that through the collective bargaining process.

He adds that the notion that Union Kitchen employees need to arrive before their shift begins to be considered on time,  but cannot clock in until the shift starts, means they’re not being compensated for all of the time they’re spending at work, is an example of how the union will help them.

When asked about this policy, Gilchrist says that “To be on time is to be on time, to be late is to be late and to be early would be early. If you’re early, you can speak with your manager about starting work early and if you’re late, well, you can’t be late.”

Gilchrist has already said that he won’t voluntarily recognize the union. (If a majority of workers sign union cards, an employer can opt to forgo an NLRB election, as Politics and Prose management ultimately chose to do.) “I’ve certainly taken affront to suggestions that we shouldn’t have an election,” he says, because voluntary recognition would mean that “the voices and the votes of our staff would be disenfranchised.”

Ballock says that orientation for new employees now includes a portion that addresses unionization, which he characterizes as “anti-union propaganda.”

Gilchrist says that the topic of the union comes up, both at orientations and more broadly. “If anyone wants to learn about the union, we’ll provide them with information,” he says. “We’ll be working with everyone to understand how they vote, why they should vote, and then helping them understand the things that will allow them to make an informed decision.”

When asked for details about what kind of information is provided, he says “there’s lots of basic facts about unions that are available on the internet,” citing UFCW’s own website as well as UnionFacts.com, which is run by an anti-union lobbyist.

In particular, Gilchrist pointed to the fact that unionized workers would pay dues to UFCW, which is an “international organization that makes its money off of dues … I think a lot of people see this as a tax for little to no gain or, in many cases, no gain” because Union Kitchen wages are already above the industry standard, he says.

UFCW Local 400 staff organizer Travis Acton says that it is illegal for employers to intimidate workers trying to form a union “so there’s a pretty well-defined, union busting playbook that, if [Gilchrist] follows, he can avoid breaking the law while also trying to intimidate workers. And how you do that? By saying there are union dues.”

For Ballock, the union is about more than wages. He says that the company’s termination of his employment has fired up other Union Kitchen employees: “The message that I’ve been trying to spread to my coworkers is this is a perfect example for why we need a union.”