Employees at an Apple Store in Towson, Maryland have set a date for their union election. Workers at the Towson Town Center location will vote in person over four days, starting on June 15th.

The organizers call themselves Coalition of Organized Retail Employees (AppleCore). They're aiming to unionize with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. 

In a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook, the group said "a solid majority" of staff supports the union drive. They said they are organizing "because of a deep love of our role as workers within the company and out of care for the company itself." They want "access to rights that we do not currently have" and for Apple to apply the same neutrality agreements it has with suppliers to workers, "so that as employees we can obtain our rights to information and collective bargaining that the law affords us through unionization."

They will be the second group of Apple Store workers to stage a union election. Those at the Cumberland Mall location in Atlanta will vote in early June on whether to join the Communications Workers of America (CWA).

Employees at Apple Stores other than the Towson and Atlanta locations are conducting union drives as well. Workers at the Grand Central Terminal store in New York City have been collecting signatures for a union vote.

While Apple has agreed to the elections in Maryland and Georgia, the company is reportedly fighting unionization efforts. It's said to have hired the same anti-union law firm as Starbucks. The company has also reportedly used anti-union talking points in pre-shift meetings at some locations. This week, workers at two stores accused Apple of union busting in Unfair Labor Practice filings.

The Communications Workers of America has filed a second Unfair Labor Practice charge against Apple this week. This time, the labor union is accusing the tech giant of violating multiple federal labor laws at its flagship World Trade Center store. The complaint alleges that Apple interrogated workers at the WTC store regarding their "protected concerted activities." Apple also allegedly monitored those activities, or at least made employees believe that they were being monitored. Based on the group's filing, those incidents happened on or about May 3rd. 

By May 15th, the group said Apple "unlawfully implemented" a rule at the store that prohibits employees from posting union flyers in work areas during their breaks. Further, it's accusing the tech giant of conducting "captive-audience" speeches designed to discourage them from unionizing. 

Earlier this year, Apple Store workers across the US started planning to unionize in an effort to get the company to increase their pay, which they claim isn't keeping up with the cost of living. Apple reportedly hired anti-union law firm Littler Mendelson, which counts Starbucks and McDonald's as clients, in response. According to a Motherboard report, the company also recently started arming its Store managers with anti-union talking points. They were apparently instructed to tell employees that they could lose career opportunities, as well as personal time off and work flexibility, if they join a union. 

The Communications Workers of America also filed an Unfair Labor Practice complaint against Apple on behalf of workers at the Cumberland Mall store on May 17th. In it, the group accused the company of holding mandatory captive audience meetings regarding the upcoming union election for the Atlanta location that's scheduled to take place in early June. 

Tim Dubnau, CWA's Deputy Organizing Director, said:

"Apple retail workers across the country are demanding a voice on the job and a seat at the table. Unfortunately, and in contradiction to its stated values, Apple has responded like a typical American corporation with heavy-handed tactics designed to intimidate and coerce workers. The best thing Apple can do is allow workers to choose for themselves whether or not they want a union. When we learn of situations where Apple is violating labor law, we intend to hold the company accountable and help the workers defend their rights under the law."

Apple Store employees who are organizing in Atlanta have accused the company of union busting and violating the National Labor Relations Act. The Communications Workers of America submitted an Unfair Labor Practice filing on behalf of workers at the Cumberland Mall store, who say Apple has conducted captive audience meetings in an attempt to fight their union drive.

For decades, companies have been allowed to conduct captive audience meetings until 24 hours before a union election begins. Employers typically use these mandatory meetings to deliver anti-union messaging.

However, as The Verge notes, National Labor Relations Board general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo claimed in a memo last month that such meetings are in violation of the National Labor Relations Act. "Forcing employees to listen to such employer speech under threat of discipline — directly leveraging the employees’ dependence on their jobs — plainly chills employees’ protected right to refrain from listening to this speech," Abruzzo wrote.

The Cumberland Mall Apple Store workers filed for a union election with the NLRB last month. The election is set for early June. The workers said that while they "love this company," they are fighting for better pay and benefits, among other things.

Union drives are in progress at other Apple Store locations. Earlier this month, it was reported that Apple gave retail store managers anti-union talking points to use in daily "download" meetings that take place before shifts.

Engadget has contacted Apple and the CWA for comment.

The management at Raven Software, the Activision Blizzard subsidiary that develops Call of Duty games, has reportedly been trying to convince its employees to vote against unionization. According to The Washington Post, the Raven management has been sending out messages and holding town hall meetings ahead of the election deadline on May 20th. 

During a meeting held on April 26th, company leadership suggested that unionization might not only impede game development, but also affect promotions and benefits. After that meeting, The Post says management sent employees an email with a message that's more direct to the point: "Please vote no." The Raven employees the publication talked to said the company's efforts were ineffective, though, and that they still voted yes for unionization. 

This saga began late last year when Raven suddenly laid off around a third of the group's QA testers after months of promising better compensation. Activision Blizzard workers staged a weeks-long strike in support of the QA employees, and unionization efforts started at the same time. Since then, Activision has been trying to dissuade workers from forming a union. 

Activision VP of QA Chris Arends reportedly told team members in a Slack meeting that a "union doesn't do anything to help us produce world-class games, and the bargaining process is not typically quick, often reduces flexibility, and can be adversarial and lead to negative publicity." The National Labor Relations Board granted the quality assurance testers' permission to hold a union vote in April, though, and workers have been sending in their ballots by mail over the past month. We'll soon find out if Activision's alleged union-busting efforts are effective soon enough: The NLRB will be counting the ballots via video conference on May 23rd.

Weeks after its workers won a union election for the first time, Amazon fired two of the employees who were involved in organization efforts. It's the first time Amazon has forced out workers involved in the union drive since the election win on April 1, according to Motherboard, though it's not whether the company took these actions in retaliation.

Mat Cusick, a warehouse worker and communications lead for the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), was on COVID-19 leave to care for a loved one when he received notice of his firing on May 3rd, he told the outlet. The reason Amazon gave was that it let go Cusick for “voluntary resignation due to job abandonment.”

Fellow organizer Tristan Dutchin said he was fired four days later for failing to meet productivity targets. "I believe it was retaliatory," Dutchin, who has been a vocal union advocate in the press, told Motherboard.

Amazon has fired workers on both sides of labor organizing drives at JFK8. In March 2020, the company terminated the employment of Chris Smalls, who led a protest over Amazon's alleged failure to protect workers from COVID-19. Smalls is now the president of ALU. In April, the company was ordered to reinstate a JFK8 worker who it fired after a protest two years earlier.

Last week, Amazon let go six senior managers who were said to have been involved in the company's anti-union efforts at JFK8. Amazon said it pushed them out as part of “management changes." Some believed they were fired as a result of the union's election win.

Amazon has challenged the election result in court. It has yet to recognize the ALU. Engadget has contacted Amazon for comment.

Employees at an Apple store in Towson, Maryland sent a letter to CEO Tim Cook today informing him of their bid to unionize, reportedThe Washington Post. The group, which has deemed itself the Coalition of Organized Retail Employees, or AppleCore for short, represents the third Apple retail outfit reported to be in the the process of unionizing. One Apple store in Atlanta is scheduled to hold a union vote in June, and another location in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal is collecting signatures. Earlier this year The Post reported that a number of other Apple stores are quietly exploring a potential union campaign, but have yet to make their efforts public.

“As our store approaches its 20th year anniversary we think about the history of this company and how we have always been different; because we have always thought differently. Today we are asking you to do the same and to pledge not to use your resources to engage in an anti-union campaign to dissuade us,” AppleCore’s members wrote in the letter. Last month, The Vergereported that Apple contracted the major anti-union law firm, Littler Mendelson, which union organizers saw as a likely attempt to nip union efforts in the bud.

The Towson group claims to have the support of around 65 percent of eligible workers, giving them a supermajority of the store’s employees. A workplace only needs signatures from thirty percent of its employees to hold an NLRB union election, but a majority of workers must support unionization in order for a campaign to be successful. As with the other Apple stores which have gone public with their intentions to unionize, Towson workers cited a lack of flexibility in scheduling, concerns around covid safety as well as stagnating pay. Lagging pay seems particularly rankling, as Apple has posted huge gains over the pandemic, even while the economy at large slumps towards a potential recession.

In a statement to The Post, an Apple spokesperson responded to the letter. “We are fortunate to have incredible retail team members and we deeply value everything they bring to Apple. We are pleased to offer very strong compensation and benefits for full-time and part-time employees, including health care, tuition reimbursement, new parental leave, paid family leave, annual stock grants and many other benefits.”

The Towson store plans to file paperwork later this month with the National Labor Relations Board. Employees at this specific store, located in the Towson Mall, are coordinating with the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, a labor union that mostly represents the aerospace and defense industry.

After decades on the decline intro, America's labor movement is undergoing a massive renaissance with Starbucks, Amazon and Apple Store employees leading the way. Though the tech sector has only just begun basking in the newfound glow of collective bargaining rights, the automotive industry has a long been a hotbed for unionization. But the movement is not at all monolithic. In the excerpt below from her new book, Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor, journalist Kim Kelly recalls the summer of 1968 that saw the emergence of a new, more vocal UAW faction, the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement, coincide with a flurry of wildcat strikes in Big Three plants across the Rust Belt.

Simon and Schuster

Excerpted from Fight Like Hell, published by One Signal/Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. Copyright © 2022 by Kim Kelly.

As of 2021, the U.S. construction industry is still booming and the building trades are heavily unionized, but not all of the nation’s builders have been so lucky. The country’s manufacturing sector has declined severely since its post–World War II high point, and so has its union density. The auto industry’s shuttered factories and former jobs shipped to countries with lower wages and weaker unions have become a symbol of the waning American empire. But things weren’t always this dire. Unions once fought tooth and nail to establish a foothold in the country’s automobile plants, factories, and steel mills. When those workers were able to harness the power of collective bargaining, wages went up and working conditions improved. The American Dream, or at least, a stable middle class existence, became an achievable goal for workers without college degrees or privileged backgrounds. Many more became financially secure enough to actually purchase the products they made, boosting the economy as well as their sense of pride in their work. Those jobs were still difficult and demanding and carried physical risks, but those workers—or at least, some of those workers—could count on the union to have their back when injustice or calamity befell them.

In Detroit, those toiling on the assembly lines of the Big Three automakers—Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors—could turn to the United Auto Workers (UAW), then hailed as perhaps the most progressive “major” union in the country as it forced its way into the automotive factories of the mid-twentieth century. The UAW stood out like a sore thumb among the country’s many more conservative (and lily-white) unions, with leadership from the likes of former socialist and advocate of industrial democracy Walter Reuther and a strong history of support for the Civil Rights Movement. But to be clear, there was still much work to be done; Black representation in UAW leadership remained scarce despite its membership reaching nearly 30 percent Black in the late 1960s.

The Big Three had hired a wave of Black workers to fill their empty assembly lines during World War II, often subjecting them to the dirtiest and most dangerous tasks available and on-the-job racial discrimination. And then, of course, once white soldiers returned home and a recession set in, those same workers were the first ones sacrificed. Production picked back up in the 1960s, and Black workers were hired in large numbers once again. They grew to become a majority of the workforce in Detroit’s auto plants, but found themselves confronting the same problems as before. In factories where the union and the company had become accustomed to dealing with one another without much fuss, a culture of complacency set in and some workers began to feel that the union was more interested in keeping peace with the bosses than in fighting for its most vulnerable members. Tensions were rising, both in the factories and the world at large. By May 1968, as the struggle for Black liberation consumed the country, the memory of the 1967 Detroit riots remained fresh, and the streets of Paris were paralyzed by general strikes, a cadre of class-conscious Black activists and autoworkers saw an opportunity to press the union into action.

They called themselves DRUM—the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement. DRUM was founded in the wake of a wildcat strike at Dodge’s Detroit plant, staffed by a handful of Black revolutionaries from the Black-owned, anti-capitalist Inner City Voice alternative newspaper. The ICV sprang up during the 1967 Detroit riots, published with a focus on Marxist thought and the Black liberation struggle. DRUM members boasted experience with other prominent movement groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the Black Panthers, combining tactical knowledge with a revolutionary zeal attuned to their time and community.

General Gordon Baker, a seasoned activist and assembly worker at Chrysler’s Dodge Main plant, started DRUM with a series of clandestine meetings throughout the first half of 1968. By May 2, the group had grown powerful enough to see four thousand workers walk out of Dodge Main in a wildcat strike to protest the “speed-up” conditions in the plant, which saw workers forced to produce dangerous speed and work overtime to meet impossible quotas. Over the course of just one week, the plant had increased its output 39 percent. Black workers, joined by a group of older Polish women who worked in the plant’s trim shop, shut down the plant for the day, and soon bore the brunt of management’s wrath. Of the seven workers who were fired after the strike, five were Black. Among them was Baker, who sent a searing letter to the company in response to his dismissal. “In this day and age under the brutal repression reaped from the backs of Black workers, the leadership of a wildcat strike is a badge of honor and courage,” he wrote. “You have made the decision to do battle, and that is the only decision you will make. We shall decide the arena and the time.”

DRUM led another thousands-strong wildcat strike on July 8, this time shutting down the plant for two days and drawing in a number of Arab and white workers as well. Prior to the strike, the group had printed leaflets and held rallies that attracted hundreds of workers, students, and community members, a strategy DRUM would go on to use liberally in later campaigns to gin up support and spread its revolutionary message.

Men like Baker, Kenneth Cockrel, and Mike Hamlin were the public face of DRUM, but their work would have been impossible without the work of their female comrades, whose contributions were often overlooked. Hamlin admitted as much in his book-length conversation with longtime political activist and artist Michele Gibbs, A Black Revolutionary’s Life in Labor. “Possibly my deepest regret,” Hamlin writes, “is that we could not curb, much less transform, the doggish behavior and chauvinist attitudes of many of the men.”

Black women in the movement persevered despite this discrimination and disrespect at work, and they also found allies in unexpected places. Grace Lee Boggs, a Chinese American Marxist philosopher and activist with a PhD from Bryn Mawr, met her future husband James Boggs in Detroit after moving there in 1953. She and James, a Black activist, author (1963’s The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker’s Notebook), and Chrysler autoworker, became fixtures in Detroit’s Black radical circles. They naturally fell in with the DRUM cadre, and Grace fit perfectly when Hamlin organized a DRUM-sponsored book club discussion forum in order to draw in progressive white and more moderate Black sympathizers. Interest in the Marxist book club was unexpectedly robust, and it grew to more than eight hundred members in its first year. Grace stepped in to help lead its discussion groups, and allowed young activists to visit her and James at their apartment and talk through thorny philosophical and political questions until the wee hours. She would go on to become one of the nation’s most respected Marxist political intellectuals and a lifelong activist for workers’ rights, feminism, Black liberation, and Asian American issues. As she told an interviewer prior to her death in 2015 at the age of one hundred, “People who recognize that the world is always being created anew, and we’re the ones that have to do it — they make revolutions.”

Further inside the DRUM orbit, Helen Jones, a printer, was the force behind the creation and distribution of their leaflets and publications. Women like Paula Hankins, Rachel Bishop, and Edna Ewell Watson, a nurse and confidant of Marxist scholar and former Black Panther Angela Davis, undertook their own labor organizing projects. In one case, the trio led a union drive among local hospital workers in the DRUM faction, hoping to carve out a place for female leadership within their movement. But ultimately, these expansion plans were dropped due to a lack of full support within DRUM. “Many of the male leaders acted as if women were sexual commodities, mindless, emotionally unstable, or invisible,” Edna Watson later told Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin for their Detroit: I Do Mind Dying. She claimed the organization held a traditionalist Black patriarchal view of women, in which they were expected to center and support their male counterparts’ needs at the expense of their own agenda. “There was no lack of roles for women... as long as they accepted subordination and invisibility.”

By 1969, the movement had spread to multiple other plants in the city, birthing groups like ELRUM (Eldon Avenue RUM), JARUM (Jefferson Avenue RUM), and outliers like UPRUM (UPS workers) and HRUM (healthcare workers). The disparate RUM groups then combined forces, forming the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. The new organization was to be led by the principles of Marxism, Leninism, and Maoism, but the league was never an ideological monolith. Its seven-member executive committee could not fully cohere the different political tendencies of its board or its eighty-member deep inner control group. Most urgently, opinions diverged on what shape, if any, further growth should take.

Apple hired Littler Mendelson — an anti-union law firm known for high-profile clients such as Starbucks, McDonald’s and Nissan — reportedThe Verge. The decision to retain the firm comes shortly after 100 workers at Apple's retail location in Atlanta’s Cumberland Mall petitioned the National Labor Relations Board last week to hold a union election. The tech giant has yet to formally respond to the petition. 

Apple workers at the Atlanta retail store are hoping to join the Communications Workers of America. The CWA has played a significant role in organizing tech industry workers in recent months, including its involvement in organizing drives Activision Blizzard subsidiary Raven Software and Verizon Wireless. 

The Cumberland Mall location is the first Apple Store in the US to file to unionize. But it likely won’t be the last. Earlier this month workers at Apple’s Grand Central location began collecting signatures to start a union. A worker at a New York store told The Verge the company had already begun holding captive audience meetings, a hallmark of union avoidance strategies. 

Hourly workers at Apple retail stores nationwide have complained of low pay, difficult working conditions and few opportunities for advancement. Many Apple employees were asked to work long hours or overtime during the pandemic, often at risk to their own health. Despite its steady ascent to becoming one of the world’s most profitable companies, the wages of its retail employees have not kept pace with either Apple's growth or the country's ballooning inflation, according to workers. 

“We are fortunate to have incredible retail team members and we deeply value everything they bring to Apple. We are pleased to offer very strong compensation and benefits for full time and part time employees, including health care, tuition reimbursement, new parental leave, paid family leave, annual stock grants and many other benefits,” Apple spokesperson Nick Leahy told The Verge, in a statement that did not in any capacity touch on the company's relationship with Littler Mendelson. 

“By retaining the notorious union busting firm Littler Mendelson, Apple’s management is showing that they intend to try to prevent their employees from exercising their right to join a union by running the same playbook as other large corporations,” said CWA Secretary-Treasurer Sara Steffens. “The workers at Starbucks, another Littler client, aren’t falling for it and neither will the workers at Apple.”

Are an Apple Store worker thinking about or starting to organize your location? We'd like to hear from you. Download Signal messenger for iOS or Android and send a text confidentially to 646 983 9846.

An independent group of Amazon workers called Amazonians United is accusing the e-commerce giant of firing four workers in Queens because they "supported a labor organization." According to BuzzFeed News, the group filed charges with the National Labor Relations Board on April 14th, arguing that the company fired the workers for "protesting terms and conditions of employment." The group also said that Amazon made the move to "discourage union activities."

Workers at Amazon's warehouses in Long Island City and Woodsland staged a walkout back in March to demand a pay raise of $3 an hour and the reinstatement of their 20-minute rest breaks. A Motherboard report about the protest noted that the workers were earning around $15.75 to $17.25 an hour and that Amazon had shortened their rest breaks from 20 to 15 minutes. Workers at the Queens facilities also joined a petition that circulated in December demanding better inclement weather policy and the right to keep their phones with them in case of emergency. 

As a labor organization, Amazonians United collectively fights for better policies that benefit workers without being an official union. It successfully fought for workplace policy changes and pay raises in the past. In this particular case, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) still has to review the group's complaint before it decides if it has any merit. Just a few days ago, the NLRB successfully convinced a judge to order Amazon to reinstate Staten Island warehouse worker Gerald Bryson. The judge sided with the labor board and agreed with its argument that the company fired Bryson in retaliation for participating in a COVID-19 safety protest back in 2020.

Workers at an Apple Store in Atlanta have filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board. This marks the first time that Apple Store employees in the US have formally requested a union election. They'll be represented by the Communications Workers of America.

Over 70 percent of more than 100 eligible workers at Apple's Cumberland Mall store have signed union authorization cards. The group includes sales associates, operations specialists, technicians and creatives. The CWA represents workers from across the telecommunications, media and tech industries.

“A number of us have been here for many years, and we don’t think you stick at a place unless you love it," Apple Genius worker Derrick Bowles said in a statement. "Apple is a profoundly positive place to work, but we know that the company can better live up to their ideals and so we’re excited to be joining together with our coworkers to bring Apple to the negotiating table and make this an even better place to work.”

Engadget has contacted Apple for comment.

Although this is the first Apple Store union drive to result in an NLRB election filing, workers at other locations in the US are attempting to organize. Last weekend, it emerged that employees at the Grand Central Terminal location in New York City were collecting signatures to form a union. That group, Fruit Stand Workers United, this week called for Apple to offer better benefits and pay a minimum of $30 per hour.