Apple Continues Efforts to Keep Retail Stores from Unionizing
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
> Apple also withheld new benefits from unionized locations, drawing outcry from labor advocates.
I am pro-union. Fight for your rights! But understand what you’re getting into: once you engage with a third party (union) to negotiate for you, you will only get what you bargain for. The animus around unequal benefits ought to be directed to their union leaders, who need to do their fucking jobs and bargain for the benefits. That’s what you pay them for!
It’s up to the individual and the collective to figure out how and whether unionizing benefits them in the context of their employer-employee relationship. Eyes open: the company has interests too. Mischaracterizing those interests is a disservice when you’re at the negotiating table.
“Wages and benefits are mandatory subjects of the collective bargaining process,” the company said. It rejects the union’s argument that it could offer the wage and benefit enhancements to unionized stores at any time.
The NLRB countered -
"...the NLRB said Starbucks violated labor law by offering raises and benefits — including increased training, career development opportunities, expanded tipping and even looser dress code policies — only to nonunion stores."*
Source: https://www.seattletimes.com/business/starbucks-shortchanged..., @ https://archive.ph/CrZTh
>The regional complaint will be heard by an administrative law judge at the NLRB. Once a decision is reached, either side can appeal to the full National Labor Relations Board in Washington.
Full disclosure: I’m operating on logic, not an expertise on labor law. I am genuinely interested in expanding my understanding of labor laws and process.
Unfortunately, by reading the first article I'm paywalled from reading the second. But the NLRB judge found them guilty is in the first paragraph.
Apple is so enormous, and so powerful, that it's going to take more than some locations unionizing to start to level things out.
We fight for unions on the basis that absent better labor laws the corporation requires an adversary to keep it from exploiting workers. It's hypocritical to insist upon a union and then get mad about a lack of corporate generosity.
I think the ultimate solution is a economic system which fundamentally recognizes that workers are involved with enterprise and deserve an ownership and some power stake in it. That might create the opportunity for this relationship to become one that is more cooperative.
At least that way the struggle might get a little less existential as every corporation would be on an even footing. I think a good portion of corporate resistance to unionization is about fearing they will have to compete with an un-unionized company.
I believe this is how Germany does it. I may be getting the details a bit off, but I believe corporate boards have to have a worker’s/union representative as a member. This makes total sense to me.
> I think a good portion of corporate resistance to unionization is about fearing they will have to compete with an un-unionized company.
Who is Apple actually in competition with?
Our economic system _permits_ that; is there something you think is specifically handicapping employee-owned businesses?
Workers in the US are free to get together and argue (without a union) for a group or general pay increase. Workers can as a group walk off the job. Workers are free to quit at any time.
Voting with your feet is the most democratic thing we have.
And employers can ignore workers or fire them. If the company ignores too much or fires too many, then the company will suffer.
IME, that works much better than using the law to privilege either side.
Have you ever actually studied a labor action? How it happens? The power dynamic is vastly in the employers favor. By far the majority fail or are outright broken by targeted firings, strike breaking, etc.
> IME, that works much better than using the law to privilege either side.
You're begging the question that it currently doesn't favor a side.
Apple plays hardball, by blaming the union for Apple's failure to extend benefits. The union blames apple for union busting in the public sphere.
The hope is that Apple's attempt to kill the nascent union will be so unpalatable to people like us, that apple will suffer more harm than benefit and agree to work with the union on an honest basis.
There's no requirement that the relationship between a union and management has to be hostile; unions are just democratic self governance structures for workers. Having a worker-led say in how the business is run can be good for the business, as unions can push back again short term business incentives.
(E.g., protecting against the cost cutting measures that led to the catastrophic train derailment in Palestine, Ohio.)
How could it not be? It’s inherent to the adversarial nature of the relationship between management and a union.
If anything an adversarial relationship with upper management precludes attempts to organize as it implies they failed their boots on the ground in some way and the problems got so fad they felt there was absolutely zero "internal" channels available to get the changes they want heard, let alone enacted.
They are unionising because Apple has money and the employees would like some more of that money. No judgement, but both sides here are simply motivated by financial self-interest.
It could be this, or it could be Apple playing tricks. If Apple just waits for the union to negotiate something and then immediately gives a better version to the non-union workers and refuses to negotiate afterwards, then that's not the union's fault.
Or maybe Apple is just doing what they were going to do anyway to attract and retain workers and they are restricted from changing the benefits agreed to by the union bargaining agreement.
In the short term it's good for the workers. After it kills off the union, it'll go back to being bad.
It's hard to form a union in the US. Companies do things like retaliating against organizers, messing with the election process, forcing workers to sit through mandatory HR briefings etc. Most unionization attempts are fought by companies who refuse to give countenance to the idea that employees should be able to delegate the business of negotiation. American business practice is to keep employees feeling as if they're in competition to each other for the affections of management. The moment workers try to avail themselves of the benefits of a corporate model (specialization, delegation, efficiency) it's treated as some sort of betrayal.
Which was, very hard. It takes a long time and a lot of effort.
… they literally are in competition with each other, though.
If I provide more value to my employer than other employees, I’m worth more, and can negotiate for more.
Refusing to negotiate is illegal, the NLRB has ruled on that in the Starbucks case.
And if it doesn't: read "refuses to negotiate" as "will dutifully sit at the table, listen to the demands and then explain that they had just a short while ago reached an agreement that is binding both sides, and they're happy to negotiate a new agreement once the current one has expired".
Unions have the ability to _force_ collective bargaining, but worker protections aren't restricted to union members.
Not really, and with good reason Google, Apple & co were punished when they "communicated" with each other to suppress wages by not competing with each other.
But that's besides the point. If you negotiate (or delegate the negotiation) a deal, you're doing so independent from others who might or might not negotiate a deal as well. Union employees certainly won't mind if they get more than non-union employees. Yet, when the union agrees to a worse deal, it's suddenly abhorrent and criminal.
It's understandable, employees are capitalists as well and optimize for maximum profit, but it's also pretty much what everyone everywhere goes through. If you buy a meal for $5 and someone else tomorrow buys the same meal and haggles it down to $4, should you get $1 back?
Germany is said to be a lot more pro-labor than the US, but as far as I'm aware, unions can't strike during the duration of their collective bargaining contracts.
You can read the union making these points here https://embed.documentcloud.org/documents/23209996-core-lett...
Source: I am a software engineer in the same union, currently serving on a bargaining committee.
Which means it becomes a political game where the union is going to help you only if you help them.
Essentially adding a third-party that lives on the monster.
And then the bosses get used to these unions and they know personally the people who represent the union, etc.
And you end up with a negotiator that will negotiates his own best interests.
Especially ironic is that the (frankly quite few) benefits and rights that workers have in the States are thanks to unions.
This is very slanted view of how labor developed in the US to simply give unions 100% of the credit, it is very revisionist history and not completely factual.
Unions can claim some credit, but to say they are solely responsible for "benefits and rights that workers have" is false.
Hell most "benefits" today (health insurance, vacation time, etc) are more directly attributive to wage price controls during WWII than they are to unions. as employers had to get creative with compensation to attract workers as they could not simply raise raw wages
I'd say the system of vacations and health insurance in the US is so shitty precisely because unions were gutted after WWII.
Workers routinely reveal their preference for higher wages over more time off. Given the option both in unions and in non-unions most workers will trade away increases in vacation time for high wage increases or starting wages.
One of the most unpopular changes my employer ever did was taking away the ability to Cash out vacation time. Many workers preferred just to cash out that time instead of taking it off.
Have you asked those workers? Do those workers even know that anything other than the status quo exists (e.g. in other countries)?
> Given the option both in unions and in non-unions most workers will trade away increases in vacation time for high wage increases or starting wages.
Again, that is a very American thing, too. Of course you'd take increased wages instead of anything just because there are little to no saftey net anywhere to guarantee that your vacation time won't end up in a horrible unrecoverable disaster of some sort.
you clearly did not understand my statement. I would specifically not get the accurate results by "asking the workers" as my claim is about revealed preferences, not stated preferences [1]. There are alots of things people claim to value when you ask them, but releval they really dont when to enter the marketplace. For example "Made in America".. people often claim they would happily pay considerable amounts more for a product if ti was "made in America" but then when presented with options they mostly choose the cheaper product regardless of where it is made revealing they do not place that much value in the nation of origin.
Similarly people often claim they want more time off, however their reveled preference by looking at their actions tell a much different story.
>Again, that is a very American thing, too
yes, it is and given we are talking about an American Company, American Unions, and American Retail stores I think talking about American work culture is relevant. People from Europe have never, and likely will never understand it, and people from American have never and will never understand Europe work culture. Personally though I am tried of Europeans being arrogant enough to claim their way is the correct, proper and only way, and that Americans are all being taken advantage of, abused, etc because we do not get 150 days off a year and do not allow our government to control our health........
>>Of course you'd take increased wages instead of anything just because there are little to no saftey net anywhere to guarantee that your vacation time won't end up in a horrible unrecoverable disaster of some sort.
While that may be true for some people, allow me to give my privileged position as an example. I created my own Safety net. I am more or less debt free, I own my home, I have enough in liquid assets to cover my expenses for a year, I have enough in less than liquid assets to cover me for a few years... I still will take increases in pay over more time off, I am just not interested in time off. I probably will continue to work well past the time I am able to financially retire.. I am not unique in America
As to more general safety nets... It is untrue that America lacks any safety nets for people. One of the most often cited negative about America by Europeans is actually one of those safety nets. Bankruptcy, which contrary to both international and domestic stigma is does not leave one destitute, homeless or anything of the sort and has LOTS of protections for people built into the system.
Then there are TON of government programs for Poor people.
In reality is the working lower middle class that have it the worst, people above the 25th percentile of income, and below the 75th percentile of income. Those are the struggling Americans.
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/revealed-preference.asp
Ah. The American arrogance shines through. "Government controlling health" and "these lazy Europeans with their 150 days of vacation".
> allow me to give my privileged position as an example. I created my own Safety net.
So, double arrogance.
> It is untrue that America lacks any safety nets for people. One of the most often cited negative about America by Europeans is actually one of those safety nets. Bankruptcy
This is not a safety net. It's the last resort. And yes, Europe has laws around bankruptcy, too.
> Then there are TON of government programs for Poor people.
I don't want to become poor before safety nets kick in. I don't want to be beholden to my employer for my medical insurance. I don't want to have only 10-14 days on average to spend time with my family or with my kids. Etc.
Oh, sorry, that's my European arrogance talking.
> In reality is the working lower middle class that have it the worst, people above the 25th percentile of income, and below the 75th percentile of income.
According to various models, it's anywhere from 30% to 45% of people, with actual numbers probably being worse: https://www.hamiltonproject.org/assets/legacy/files/download...
Factual statements are not arrogance.
>>This is not a safety net. It's the last resort.
My point is it should not be considered the "last resort", in fact I think people wait far far far too long to file for bankruptcy.
>>Europe has laws around bankruptcy
While true, The US is normally cited as creator of personal bankruptcy law, and it used as the benchmark. Changes in the laws in the EU has expanded personal bankruptcy but in many parts of the EU the bankruptcy laws are not as favorable to personal debtors than in the US.
>>I don't want to become poor before safety nets kick in.
Then it is no longer a safety net... It is just a universal income scheme or outright socialism.
>>I don't want to be beholden to my employer for my medical insurance.
Nor do I, which is why I support deregulation of the industry, returning to free market principles, and allowing tax exemptions for personally acquired plans instead of only when it is part of an employer plan (and a range of other reforms) instead of just believing the government should provide....
>I don't want to have only 10-14 days on average to spend time with my family or with my kids. Etc.
Great, negotiate that with your employer. People that do not have those same priorities should also be free to negotiate what they want which may include less time off. That is what a free society allows for. What you want however is to mandate your preference, believing that is what is best for "everyone"
>According to various models, it's anywhere from 30% to 45% of people, with actual numbers probably being worse
One of the reasons for that is the "safety net" system which largely punishes people for their success. If the poor attempt to climb out of poverty that system takes away benefits faster then the income is replacing those benefits, literally paying people to stay poor.
A better system then this network of misaligned "safety net" programs where the government is providing services or payments to fix specific perceived problems (housing, food, etc) would be a more generalized graduated negative income tax system that phases out as the person makes increasing income. This would have to replace all "safety net" programs, and make people individually responsible which is a negative concept in the modern world.
In the US unions are required to assist even non-members who are in jobs represented by the union. It's called the "free rider" problem.
> And then the bosses get used to these unions and they know personally the people who represent the union, etc.
This has historically been a problem in non-worker-run unions, and may still be. In worker-run unions workers directly elect their representatives from the membership. If you think your current leadership is too tight with management then you can run against them, or vote for someone who does.
Then you can get the opposite problem.. some with no understanding of the business, which never works out for anyone either the workers or the business.
Workers could get screwed with out knowing it, or the demands are soo outside what the business can support the business would never agree.
The elected person is still a worker at the business. Still talks with other workers at the business, as well as management. And still has access to the non-elected employees of the union whose job it is to catalog and remember institutional knowledge.
Contract negotiations typically always start this way, from both sides of the bargaining table. That's why it's called contract bargaining. After a few rounds of back and forth you're supposed to hit something that's acceptable to both sides.
Spunds like damned if you do, damned of you don't
Is there any way for a worker to stand up for himself that sits right with you?
You can negotiate alone, but you have much less bargaining power that way. There's a reason the big tech companies all work together on their side of this negotiation (colluding with other employers to lower salaries, all doing layoffs at the same time, etc.): it works.
In states without Right-to-work laws, once the union is in place, employees are NOT able to freely pool with other employees, they're restricted to pooling with ALL of the union members in that shop, or even multiple shops.
Freely pooling together...like a union? Your argument seems to hang on the notion that once people do pool together, they lose all control and the union they created turns on its own members. That's like saying corporations shouldn't have any management because the managers will just enrich themselves at the expense of the owners.
It's particularly odd to read this since the person you replied told you that they're literally on the bargaining committee. So you're warning them about...themselves?
Yes I'm sure that OP already knows that sitting at the negotiating table is a good position for him but all the other members of the Union don't have that privilege.
All bargaining sessions are open to observation by all unit members, and have been since day one. Ten percent of the unit was elected by single transferrable vote (Meek Rule) to speak at the bargaining table. But that is just to keep the bargaining orderly; union proposals are drafted by any interested members. We keep them all in a Google Drive so anyone can check in on the state of bargaining. We also take extensive notes for members who could not observe in real time to catch up the state of bargaining.
Once the bargaining committee reaches a tentative agreement with the employer, the whole membership will have to ratify it by secret ballot before it goes into effect.
Where is the "privilege" in this system, exactly?
If you don't actively support your union by signing petitions, being a member (US unions can no longer collect funds from non-members, so membership rates matter), and voting to take action, there's not much the leaders can do. There's still some things the leadership can do, but it's typically not action that will get the company to do anything.
> you will only get what you bargain for
Negotiating in bad faith does happen. At my job management quickly agreed to, and paid out early, our bargaining. And then a couple months after it was signed gave out out-of-cycle inflation raises to non-represented employees. The first time this has happened that I know of. And my union can't do anything about it for a few years because our contract is signed.
Management said that all raises, even this special out-of-cycle one, was subject to negotiation. Even though our bargained contract stated that out-of-cycle raises could happen without negotiation. Heads they win, tails we lose.
Edit: changed "month and a half" to "couple months" because it was shortly after, but I may be a bit wrong about the timing.
There are things that I did not post, and am not going to.
You're assuming good faith bargaining, which is frequently absent. It's strategic for the company to reward non-union employees to hurt the union, even if it's economically inefficient to do so. The reality is that the only leverage the union has is litigation, moral conflict (complaining about it publicly), or going on strike. The union's resources are a function of its members' resources. Apple is rich, the union members are relatively poor, and Apple intends to keep it that way.
A lot of modern labor strategic dilemmas stem from Samuel Gompers, a 19th century trade unionist who was deeply anti-socialist. He fought against affiliations of unions across industries (as promoted by more socialist groups like the IWW), arguing that laborers within each industry had more interests in common with their employers than workers in other industry. He argued instead for a federalized model of labor, which gave rise to the modern AFL.
The reason this matters today is that the fragmentation of trade unions makes coordinated industrial action virtually impossible even where unions exist, because few companies are vertically integrated. Trade unions thus have only one site (their own workplace) to exert leverage because they're unable to coordinate with workers in other areas (ie farther back on the supply chain), and sympathy strikes are now generally illegal. In theory the AFL was supposed to fill this coordination function. In practice it served as an administrative brake on the ambitions of more assertive organizers, and kept workers at their posts during World War 1 to ensure the successful participation of the USA in that war (which was opposed by more socialist minded organizations).
Intentionally or not, Gompers institutionalized the fragmentation of the labor movement in the US, and practitioners of corporate divide-and-conquer tactics have been quietly thanking him ever since.
Ultimately the union bargains for benefits above and beyond what companies already give their non union employees. The tactic winds up putting some companies over the barrel during union negotiations sometimes as it means whatever we win gets extended to an already well compensated non union workforce.
Thank a union carpenter for your 40 hour work week ;)
I’m happy about workers fighting for rights union or not… but what gets me irritated is rhetoric that focuses on the union itself and not the workers.
In this case… The union agreed to its contract, people should stop whining about what they agreed to. You want now you have to wait until it’s time to renegotiate. You wanted a deal that only gets updated periodically when the contact is up, that’s the mechanics of what you agreed to.
I do agree that they should be focusing on renegotiations, what's currently happening is they're letting a lot of reporters get away with framing the situation as a "loss" for the union.
I don't fully grasp your irritation regarding the focus on the union itself, it's supposed to be a representation of the workers as a baseline.
If union negotiates X,Y,Z into their contract and a year later the company offers an upgraded Z2, the union doesn't get it because it’s not in their contract.
That’s just how labor negotiations work.
Have you participated in a real union somewhere before and read through the bylaws and such?
An employer is never going to give a union a freebie. Just like a union would never give the employer a freebie. Why? Because the very nature of a union involves bargaining over a fixed contract for a period of time.
And every time a new contract negotiation happens the union will want X and the employer will want Y. Why would either side give the other something without getting something in return? That's just bad negotiation.
It also serves the union's employees well: they'll have to go negotiate and prove to their members that they are worth the union dues they pay to get these benefits. These people have no interests in Apple just raising salaries for everyone.
> Might be new to tech union figures
Apple Stores isn't tech, it's retail.
Apple Stores are ultimately owned by Apple, which most would consider a "tech" company.
It is not 100% automatically on the union to chase the company for literally everything. That only winds up being the case when the company is actively trying to weaken the union.
Any union that automatically rejects offered benefits from the company unless they are part of yearly negotiations or something is just a bad union.
Maybe many such bad unions exist. I think it's much more likely that companies are very aware that they can make your unions look bad by offering benefits to non-union employees and when asked they pretend to be helpless. Obviously it's the big mean union that is not working.
Sure, but it could be construed as promising benefits to employees to discourage their union support, which violates the NLRA [0] and indeed was cited by Merck, Sharp & Dohme Corp. in the dispute against them back in 2019 [1]. No company with a sane legal department would treat a counterparty differently than the contract stipulates, even if such a treatment could be considered 'preferential.' The legal risk is just too great.
[0]https://eclkc.ohs.acf.hhs.gov/human-resources/article/nation... [1]https://ogletree.com/insights/nlrb-explains-when-granting-be...
Ok, but there is nothing stopping them from approaching the union with the proposed new benefit.
In addition, the union doesn't care about one unit of workers. They will happily sacrifice one store, or one industry, to further their goals - which may or may not be aligned with the workers.
Their actions and their rhetoric shows that's the case.
If workers agree to be a means to some other end then that's great. But most of them aren't smart enough or aware enough to understand this, from what it seems. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
So satisfying watching them be forced to take the mask off in public view for once.
In general all of these big companies only hold progressive values if it's profitable to do so. You'll see rainbow-colored logos on big corporate campuses but when it's time to censor or surveil minority groups for the government they all line up.
Neither do they care about the environment, gay rights, privacy, or whatever other issue they pretend to care about.
How about reframing it :
Companies can not 'care' about anything because companies are legal vehicles that do not have agency.
The individual people that make up the company obviously care about these things to varying extents. I highly doubt it's literally zero for any company >100 employees.
Although it's theoretically possible for all the 'care' to perfectly cancel each other out (e.g. half the employees for and half against something) it seems unlikely in Apple's case.
If it was legal and they could profit $300M by killing thousands of people they would do it.
Go read about the nervous systems of people failing from the solvents they use the clean the phone screens on the assembly lines. You think Tim Cook is up at night worrying about these people? He’s not.
Instead they would say “let’s use this contractor, they’re 1% cheaper” never considering that the difference is made up from decreased safety that kills people.
Society only tends to equate these two kinds of cases when action causes very direct harm.
Which is precisely my point with this topic and the unions. Finally for once we see the real ethos.
There’s room to have faith in the executives of these megacorporations, I don’t.
While what you're saying may well be true, it doesn't prevent bad influences from compromising values you think are immutable. We worship Bell Labs on this website too, but their company culture and "hacker identity" didn't prevent Room 641A from happening. This "unlikely in Apple's case" business seems so baseless when the entire industry wears indecision on it's sleeve. Even Apple cannot promise human rights to all of their customers, loathe as this site is to hear it.
I'm not aware of a single case where Apple on-the-record promised to customers anything so abstract. Can you link to one example?
Then it would seem that my original statement is correct, no?
This doesn't seem relevant to my last 2 comments.
Since unions are are always deemed a negative in the realm of pure bean counting it's just further proof their stances are hollow financial calculations made for public appeal rather than actual activism because the values between these two actions are politically inconsistent in terms of modern progressive but make perfect sense if you see the world as a bean counting contraption.
A few weeks ago I listened to the CEO of my company. He went on and on about diversity. Then somebody asked about how the yearly merit increases would compensate for inflation. He rambled a little about the difficult competitive space and then started another monologue about diversity.
Re: the risks of unionization especially in retail - are they ever greater than the risk of not unionizing? And are there examples of workers at companies that benefited from not unionizing?
It’s just an obversarion I have, but it seems like the younger generation is pro-union and was wondering if it’s just my imagination.
But the more workplaces start abusing their employees, the more pro-union workers become. So that's what we're seeing today, people don't start to become pro-union just because.
It’s hard to characterize these white collar jobs with great benefits, as being abusive.
It’s not like these workers are in coil mines 15-hours/day making below minimum wage.
They are working in an ultra luxury retail store selling premium devices.
No but with the advent of communication devices beepers, mobile phones, mobile computers, etc the typical office worker can be reach and in some situations is expected to be reached and respond _27/4_ in a salary type position (I’m not saying this is the 100% norm, no is it abused by every employer).
Coal miners don’t have the luxury of a _connected_ job.
Sounds very unlikely that Apple store employees get paged at night :/
Whether or not your job is dangerous and physical, collective bargaining is a powerful tool thats challenges the inherent power of the employer.
the fact they weren't coal miners doesn't mean they didn't die from their work.
I've not read about such a correlation; age and obesity had high correlations but I hadn't seen such for retail workers.
Do you have a source?
poor people have shitty health. retail workers are poor. i.e. retail workers have shitty health. without any additional correlation you have that by definition.
Not to mention many customers of retail stores behave outrageously badly, and as the front line staff you're going to bear the brunt of it.
For hard numbers, a Gallup Poll made in the last year shows 71 percent of all Americans approve of labor unions more generally, the highest it's been since the twilight of the New Deal Coalition in the mid 1960s. Source: https://news.gallup.com/poll/398303/approval-labor-unions-hi...
I can’t blame them — especially for tenure-based promotion/layoffs, which cripple an organization’s ability to promote the best qualified and remove under-performers.
Boards are never going to accept basing promotions or layoffs on tenure.
https://9to5mac.com/2017/07/29/apple-top-retailer-per-square...