TOWSON, Md. (AP) – The historic vote of employees of an Apple store in Maryland to unionize, a first for the technology giant, is an important step in a long process that, according to labor experts, is very crowded against workers in favor of their employers. .
Employees of Apple stores in a suburb of Baltimore voted Saturday in favor of unionizing by a margin of nearly 2 to 1, joining a growing push in the retail, service and technology industries of the Baltimore suburbs. United States to organize for greater protection of the workplace.
It is unclear whether the recent wave of unionization represents a broader shift in U.S. work. But experts say the current shortage of workers for hourly and low-paying jobs means employees have more power than they historically had, especially when unemployment is low.
“It’s not too big to lose one of those jobs because you can get another nasty job,” said Ruth Milkman, a research researcher at City University in New York.
The question is, what happens now?
Apple’s retail workers in Towson, Maryland, voted 65-33 to apply to join the International Association of Aerospace Mechanics and Workers, according to the union’s announcement. The National Labor Relations Board must now certify the result. A spokesman referred the first inquiries about the vote to the regional office of the board, which closed on Saturday afternoon. The board did not immediately respond to a message from the Associated Press on Sunday.
Once the vote is certified, the union and Apple can begin negotiating a contract.
“Labor law in the United States is a long process. And so the fact that a single store bargains or chooses a union does not mean that there is a contract negotiated in the workplace. And we know from recent history that in many of these situations, the parties cannot come to an agreement with an initial contract, “said Michael Duff, a former NLRB lawyer and professor at the University of Wyoming.
“The U.S. employer has many rights to simply withdraw recognition at the end of the process. The employer can demonstrate that it no longer supports most employees in the bargaining unit,” Duff added.
Even after a union is certified, a company has a number of legal maneuvers at its disposal to combat it, Duff said. For example, Apple might say that it does not believe that the NLRB-certified bargaining unit is a suitable bargaining unit. and refusing to negotiate with the union.
“If that happens, it all happens in court and it could be a year or two before you even wonder if the employer is forced to negotiate with the union,” Duff added.
Labor experts say it is common for employers to lengthen the bargaining process to try to get the most out of union campaigns. It is also possible that Apple, or any other company, will restructure its business so that unionized workers are reclassified as independent contractors and not as employees, in which case the union vote is debatable, Duff said.
Apple declined to comment on Saturday’s development, company spokesman Josh Lipton told The Associated Press on the phone. Arriving again on Sunday, Apple made no comment.
The success of the vote serves to inspire workers across the country to get organized, said John Logan, director of labor and labor studies at San Francisco State University.
“Employees are already organizing in other Apple stores, but that shows them that the company is not invincible,” he said.
The well-known Apple brand is also likely to help.
“The public has a very direct relationship with companies like Apple, so the union’s first victory will generate huge coverage on traditional media and social media,” Logan said. “Young workers are learning union activism through this coverage, and some are likely to be inspired to try to organize their own jobs.”
While U.S. labor law is against workers, Duff said he thinks “if there is an awakened labor movement in the United States, it will happen that way.”
Trade union organization in a variety of areas has gained momentum recently after decades of falling U.S. trade union membership. Organizers have been working to establish unions in companies such as Amazon, Starbucks, the parent company of Google Alphabet and the outdoor retailer REI.
The International Association of Aerospace Mechanics and Workers and Apple employees who wanted to join said last month they sent a notice to Apple CEO Tim Cook that they were trying to form a union. The statement said his motive was to seek “rights we do not currently have”. He added that workers have recently organized into the Coalition of Organized Retail Employees, or CORE.
“I applaud the courage shown by CORE members at Towson’s Apple Store to achieve this historic victory,” IAM International President Robert Martinez Jr. said in a statement. “They made a great sacrifice for the thousands of Apple employees across the country who had their eyes set on this election.”
Martinez called on Apple to respect election results and allow unionized employees to speed up efforts to secure a contract at Towson’s location.
The IAM presents itself as one of the largest and most diverse industrial unions in North America, representing approximately 600,000 active and retired members in the aerospace, defense, airline, railroad, traffic, healthcare, automotive, and other industries. Logan said Apple’s victory shows that the established labor movement “is able to adapt to the needs of the group of self-employed and confident workers you find in Apple stores.”
The unionization vote for Apple stores is in the context of other labor organization efforts across the country, some of which were rejected.
Amazon workers at a warehouse in New York City voted in favor of unionization in April, the first successful U.S. organizational effort in the history of the retail giant. However, workers at another Amazon warehouse on Staten Island overwhelmingly turned down a union offer last month. Meanwhile, Starbucks workers at dozens of U.S. stores have voted in favor of unionizing in recent months, after two of the coffee chain’s stores in Buffalo, New York, voted to eventually unionize. from last year.
Many unionization efforts have been led by young workers in their 20s and even adolescence. A group of Google engineers and other workers formed the Alphabet Workers Union last year, which represents about 800 Google employees and is run by five people under the age of 35.
“This is the generation with the kind of worldview that is really different from what we’ve seen in many generations,” Milkman of CUNY said. “They believe in that.”