Workers at the REI store in New York voted in favor of unionization on Wednesday, creating the only union in the outdoor equipment and clothing retailer. The vote, which took place in the store, was 88 to 14.
The vote in Manhattan’s Soho district followed a series of efforts to unite high-ranking employers in the services sector. Workers at three Starbucks stores have voted in favor of unionization since early December, creating the only union in the company’s stores. Workers at two Amazon warehouses will complete voting in the union election later this month.
REI, with about 170 stores and 15,000 employees nationwide, is a cooperative owned by customers who buy lifelong memberships, which are currently $ 30, and is branded as a progressive company, in the spirit of Starbucks. His website says the cooperative believes in “profit-making” and that it invests more than 70 percent of its profits in the “outdoor community”, including contributions to non-profit organizations.
“REI SoHo employees are ready to negotiate a strong contract that will allow them to maintain the progressive values of the cooperative, while providing the first-class services that REI customers have expected,” said a statement from Stuart Apelbaum, president of the Trade Union. retail, wholesale and department stores, which helped organize the workers.
After the vote, the company said in a statement: “As we said during this process, REI firmly believes that deciding whether or not to be represented by a union is important and we respect the right of every employee to choose or reject union representation.”
John Logan, a professor of labor research at San Francisco State University, said that, like Starbucks, REI attracts workers who appear to have an ideological affinity for unions beyond the potential practical benefits, such as wage increases.
“REI seems to be another example of mostly young workers who do not accept the argument that unions are special interest groups,” Logan said in an email.
The company sets the average age of its workers at 37, about five years younger than the average age of all workers in the United States.
Store workers began organizing in the fall of 2020, in part because many felt that employees who had been outspoken about raising safety concerns about Covid were not allowed to return after the REI temporarily closed its stores. in the same year. An election petition was submitted five weeks ago.
In a video conference with reporters last week convened by the retail workers’ union, Claire Chang, a visual presentation specialist who has worked at the store for more than four years, also raised concerns about the safety of the coronavirus.
Ms. Chang said that after the store reopened in 2020, managers asked workers how comfortable they would feel when reopening rehearsals, where employees are in frequent contact with clothing worn by customers.
“Most, if not all, of the staff said they were not feeling well, and yet they went on to do so,” Ms. Chang said.
Steve Buckley, a sales specialist who has been in the store for about six months, said in a video conference that he was one of several workers who contracted the coronavirus during Omicron’s jump while the store was crowded with customers.
A REI spokesman said the retailer had released less than 5 percent of its workers nationwide when reopened, and that the decisions had nothing to do with how outspoken the employees were. She said the rehearsals were equipped with disinfectant supplies and that the store had limited capacity during the pandemic.
She cites a study from 2021, which shows that employees usually value the company highly on issues such as whether it treats them as valuable employees.
Several workers said they had tried to unite because of the gap they felt between the REI’s behavior and the values it cited, arguing that the workplace had become more impersonal and profit-oriented as it pursued to expand.
“There was a huge push to sell members,” Graham Gale, an employee of the organization, said in a text message to a reporter in January.
The workers also said that REI had conducted an aggressive anti-union campaign, bringing in company employees to hold meetings with employees about the risks of syndicating and hanging materials in rest rooms and creating a website that highlighted those risks.
Mr Buckley said the meeting, which he attended with senior officials in February, lasted about two hours and touched on issues such as health insurance. Officials “openly shouted at us that we were wrong about the basic policies in our store and the basic conditions we are facing,” he said. “How is this respectful environment?” The company offers health insurance to workers who work at least 20 hours a week on average after one year.
The spokesman said the company had tried to share information about the unions and that the meeting in February was a long-term training to restart the company’s membership program.
Mr Logan, a professor of labor research, said one of the reasons REI’s efforts to dissuade workers from uniting in unions like Starbucks may not have been effective is that shops are usually not overcrowded with supervisors. .
“They work relatively autonomously, with little managerial presence or oversight, thus providing ample opportunity for union talks,” Mr Logan said. “Once they do that, anti-union propaganda becomes less effective – their minds are resolved.”