LOUISVILLE, Ky. — In a 48-36 vote, workers at the Trader Joe’s in Louisville have voted to join Trader Joe’s United, an independent union of Trader Joe’s.

The union announced the vote tally at 7:33 p.m. on Thursday night via Twitter.

“The main takeaway from this union drive is that we will never let divisiveness win. This is a mass step in the right direction for not only our store, but for the company as a whole,” said Connor Hovey, an employee and organizer at the Louisville Trader Joe’s. “We are very excited to bring our concerns to the bargaining table, with the hopes that Trader Joe’s will have the best intentions while we bargain for our first contract.”

The Louisville store, in St. Matthews, will join two other Trader Joe’s locations that unionized as well. In July 2022, Trader Joe’s workers in Hadley, Mass., won their union election and were joined two weeks later by the Trader Joe’s in Minneapolis.

Trader Joe’s United said it is a “worker-led movement organizing Trader Joe’s” and has worked with all three locations that voted to unionize. They announced the push to unionize in Louisville on Dec. 20, 2022. In a video shared on Twitter, Hovey shared the rationale for unionization, saying, “At this current moment, it seems like the company’s scope of core values is broken and shattered on the inside. We want to fix that.”

The store becomes another player in a recent wave of union efforts in Kentucky. Workers at Starbucks coffee shops and workers at local coffee chain Heine Brothers Coffee have unionized, citing the need for better pay and working conditions. Journalists at the Louisville Courier-Journal also voted to unionize and the Amazon Air Hub in northern Kentucky attempted to unionize at the end of last year.