LaborLab estimates AutoZone spent about $200,000 opposing the White Plains drive
Workers at an AutoZone in White Plains, New York, are seeking to become the first retail store employees at the country’s largest auto parts retailer to win a union election, with voting scheduled to begin September 25.
Eleven workers at the White Plains store are eligible to cast ballots on joining United Auto Workers Local 259. The drive comes as the workers’-rights watchdog LaborLab estimates AutoZone has spent about $200,000 opposing the unionization effort at the single location — a calculation based on external attorney costs and internal costs derived from executive salaries, drawing on reports from workers at the store.
For the workers behind the push, the route to a vote has already been long. Nathan DuCongé, who has worked at the White Plains store for about two years and started as a sales associate making minimum wage, said pay was part of what prompted his interest. “For a job that just essentially pays minimum wage, it just makes no sense, that you’re doing all of this work, which essentially is service sales, and you’re also expected to upsell certain products too,” DuCongé said. He said the campaign accelerated after he attended an Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee training session and met a UAW organizer.
David Valencia, who began at the White Plains store in May 2026, said he became interested in the union after being scheduled to work the Fourth of July holiday without receiving holiday pay or a bonus. “When I got my paycheck and saw that they didn’t pay anything extra when part-time employees leave their families for holidays and sacrifice the time that they have with their families to come to work, you don’t get anything extra, any recognition, and that just blew my mind,” Valencia said. According to Indeed, AutoZone only provides paid holidays for eligible full-time employees.
Valencia framed the choice in stark terms. “Our goal is to get compensation, job security, just more things that closely reflect the value that we know that we bring to the company. We’re not getting close to what we’re worth,” he said. “There is no bargaining when you’re alone. They’re only going to bargain when you’re together. So we don’t have a choice. Either we’re going to live in poverty and not be able to pay our bills, or we’re going to do this.”
After the workers collected enough authorization cards to file for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board, DuCongé and Valencia said, regional and corporate managers and HR executives arrived at the store the following day. “They had sent in a whole fleet of managers, they were flying in people from around the country, and it was very bizarre, because even customers were kind of noticing how many managers were in the store,” DuCongé said.
DuCongé said management initially asked how they could help, then switched to discouraging unionization after the group issued a letter announcing its intent. “They were pulling people into the back. They had these long meetings where they would read: ‘Hey, we don’t think that the union is good. Here’s all the reasons why,’” he said. AutoZone then threatened to delay the election by challenging DuCongé’s eligibility, he said, and promoted him to a supervisor position. The promotion forced the union election petition to be withdrawn in late July before being refiled in August, he said.
“We essentially had no choice. If we wanted to get to an election, I had to sacrifice my eligibility as a worker,” DuCongé said.
DuCongé provided recordings in which, he said, a manager told him “we will accept your invitation to fire you,” though DuCongé said he had never suggested that. He said he was also told his social media posts were being monitored. He shared a screenshot of AutoZone CEO Phil Daniele’s Facebook account appearing among viewers of a DuCongé Facebook story about the union campaign.
Letters from AutoZone management obtained by the workers pleaded for them to vote against the union, citing union dues and warning that “you could actually end up with less” because “nobody knows what tradeoffs will be made in bargaining” and “your wages could go up or down.” The letters did not cite any proposed contract that would leave workers with less pay, nor explain why either AutoZone or the union would propose regressive pay in a contract. One letter stated: “I believe local 259 will destroy the mutual respect, teamwork and culture you and I have built at store 2976.”
LaborLab, working with workers at the store, identified at least 11 corporate executives who appeared at the White Plains location whom the watchdog says were there to deter organizing, along with several regional and district managers.
AutoZone did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The company operates more than 6,800 retail stores in the United States and reported a net income of $2.5bn in fiscal year 2025.
The current campaign echoes an earlier, unsuccessful Teamsters effort at an AutoZone distribution center in the early 1990s. The Teamsters lost that election, but the National Labor Relations Board subsequently ordered a rerun, citing AutoZone’s conduct during the campaign, which the board found included prohibiting union discussions at work, threatening workers with loss of their jobs and withholding scheduled pay increases.
Valencia said the company’s response to the current campaign reflects the stakes for workers. “Seeing the amount of money, the managers, everybody that they’re sending in, it really kind of shows that you can make change at the store,” he said. “You can make change within the company because the fact that you’re unionizing it and you’ve got this kind of a response is actually a good thing. It means that you really are out there changing things, and I believe that if we can do it, and hopefully we do win, then everybody else can too.”