According to new reporting, employees at at least eight Apple Stores in America are at various stages of unionizing. by The Washington Post.
Anonymous sources, including at most one organizer, claim that two stores are ready to file a petition to unionize with the National Labor Relations Board. They have also contacted major unions. Six other stores are still in the early stages of organizing. The Washington Post found.
The organizing efforts are inspired by Starbucks Workers United’s extraordinary campaign in which nearly 100 stores across the country have filed for unionization over just the past few months. Apple Store workers say that their wages aren’t rising with the rate of inflation and that the company hasn’t been giving them an equal share of the record-breaking profitsThat the employees have contributed to sales and repairs.
According to financial filings, over a third of the company’s $366 billion in total revenue in 2021 was made from its website or within retail stores. The company owns over 270 retail stores in the U.S., and employs more 65,000 retail workers.
Within the last few months of 2021Despite losing billions to supply shortages and chip losses in the fall, the company saw a 20% increase in profits. The tech giant grows in value almost every month. the company becameThe first person in the world to achieve a value of more than $3 trillion
But retail employees say that they aren’t seeing this growth in their paychecks. They can earn between $17 to $30 an hour depending on where they live and what stocks they have. The lowest end of this range, which is about $35,000 per year, is just over a living wage for a full time worker with no children in a place with a cheaper cost of living like central Ohio; that wage is no longer viable to live off of if a worker has a child, according to MIT’s living wage calculator.
“I have a lot of co-workers and friends who I genuinely love and they do not make enough to get by,” an organizer told The Washington Post. “They’re struggling and they’re hurting and we work for a company that has the resources to make sure that they’re taken care of.”
Workers also say that wages haven’t kept up with inflation in recent years – meaning that employees could effectively be getting pay cuts as inflation rises.
Meanwhile, CEO Tim Cook received nearly $100 millionLast year, the company paid out compensation. spent $85.8 billionBuybacks
Employees say that while they may make more than other retail employees – many of whom aren’t being paid livable wages – they bring in a massive amount of value for the hugely profitable company, which is clearly benefiting. Workers tell The Washington Post that their “knowledge and passion for the products help drive sales and that they should share more fully in the company’s success,” the publication wrote.
Organizers expect union busting from the company. Managers have begun to pull employees aside to share anti-union propaganda. They claim Apple will take away benefits if employees unionize. Organizers claim that managers are also monitoring workers and using Android phones as a means to organize have found other, less obvious methods of communication.
Previous reporting has found thatApple employees are often isolated when they have to deal with problems at work. The Verge reported in December that employees say they’re overworked and don’t have anywhere to turn when they’re facing problems like a missed paycheck or a poor manager. “Corporate makes decisions based on what they think will work in the stores without talking to people who work in the stores,” one employee told The Verge. Retail employees are treated as an “afterthought,” the publication reported.
After working for eight years in the store, Mark Calivas, an employee at Apple Southpoint in Durham, North Carolina, was faced with so many problems that he committed suicide. The Verge reported. His best friend told the publication that “it was Apple” that did it, after the store got a manager that bullied and intimidated Calivas and HR was unresponsive to the issue.
