Whole Foods CEO Slams Workers' Rights, Health Care Reform

Whole Foods shoppers have long paid a premium for wholesome food they thought they were buying from a socially conscious retailer. Turns out it's been bait-and-switch all along.

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey has publicly attacked the Employee Free Choice Act and real health care reform. Now consumers and unions are fighting back.

In the time since Mackey wrote an anti-reform op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, outraged shoppers have launched boycotts that are rapidly spreading through online social networks and blogs.

"While all of us empathize with those who are sick, how can we say that all people have more of an intrinsic right to health care than they have to food or shelter?" Mackey wrote. "This 'right' has never existed in America." A public option is "the last thing our country needs," he declared.

Mackey has been working behind the scenes to strip out majority sign-up and other key provisions from the Employee Free Choice Act, and likes to boast that his stores are "100 percent union-free."

But union members, consumers and activists are showing up in force outside Mackey's stores nationwide. This week UFCW members in St. Paul, Minn., demonstrated in front of a local Whole Foods as the start of a campaign to educate shoppers about Mackey's efforts to undermine health care reform and workers' rights.