Costco's current and outgoing CEOs blamed themselves after a Norfolk, Virginia warehouse moved to unionize.
Outgoing CEO Craig Jelinek and now CEO Ron Vachris sent a letter to employees that was shared Friday on Reddit.
"We're not disappointed in our employees; we're disappointed in ourselves as managers and leaders," the two company leaders wrote. "The fact that a majority of Norfolk employees felt that they wanted or needed a union constitutes a failure on our part."
"At Costco, we take great pride in our relationships with each other," the letter continued. "We're not anti-union, but our core value of "taking care of our employees" has never been the result of any union. It's been part of Costco's Mission Statement and the foundation of our Employee Agreement from the very beginnings of Costco's business."
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Last week, the Teamsters announced a vote to add 238 Norfolk workers to the union.
"I agreed with that letter wholeheartedly because that means over 50% of those employees felt like they couldn't go to management with issues, or they went to management and couldn't get their issues resolved in a way they deemed fit," one Costco manager in California told Business Insider.
Costco employs more than 18,000 Teamsters as workers nationwide.
