Freelance journalist Mark Harris writes in a new article, about how the supposedly socially responsible Dragonfly Media, owner of numerous "community-based New Age-type magazines" caved in to the national grocery chain Whole Foods Market in 2003. It gave the company a year of free advertising, after upsetting it by running an ad in support of workers trying to unionize at its Madison store.

Harris examines the shallowness of Dragonfly Media, which panders to its "socially conscious" target audience about the difficult choices a media company must make when considering to whom it will sell advertising space. At the same time, it was pre-empting editorial space in an issue of one of its magazines, Conscious Choice, that would have highlighted that magazine's negative article about Wal-Mart.

Harris’s piece deals with an increasingly important issue for those who consider the impact of their consumption habits on the world around them. The issue of businesses that claim “social responsibility,” as a founding principle in order to make profits, all while ignoring glaring irresponsibility in its actual business practices was at the heart of the Madison Whole Foods worker’s drive to form a union at their store.

Many in the Madison area will remember how in the summer of 2002, when workers asked the company to show a commitment to its expressed desire for employees to have meaningful voice on the job by recognizing their union, Whole Foods responded with an intense anti-union campaign of lies and intimidation.

Despite their overwhelming victory in an official election six weeks later, Whole Foods employees were ignored at the bargaining table. The company stonewalled the union for months, until high turnover at the store caused the number of employees hired after the union election to grow, eventually to the point where an anti-union committee was formed (most likely at the prompting of Whole Foods management) that began a public anti-union campaign.

The union the workers chose to affiliate with, UFCW Local 1444, was incapable of running an effective contract campaign against Whole Foods, and eventually the organizing committee was forced to dissolve their union or face an official decertification vote they would have almost certainly lost. However, Whole Foods Workers Organizing Committee members continue to provide organizing advice to other Whole Foods employees across the country.