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The spacious second-floor conference room at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, was an unlikely place for labor and management to face off, but there they were: eight Trader Joe’s workers at one row of tables, a Trader Joe’s official and two lawyers for the company at another. On the walls hung student paintings of brilliant, swirling flowers. They did little to cheer the atmosphere.Three months earlier, in July 2022, employees at a Trader Joe’s in Hadley, four miles from Smith, had vo