What happened to the Apple store union campaign?

Kristen Radtke / The Verge

Apple was close to joining Starbucks in a nationwide unionizing campaign. Dozens of stores began to organize after two stores filed paperwork. The first Apple store in the country voted to unionize in June.

The tech firm hired anti- union lawyers. Vice president of people and retail Deidre O'Brien made a video discouraging employees from unionizing. It decided to give a 10 percent retail pay hike.

The campaign didn't say anything.

A worker in Texas said that the temperature for considering a union has gone cold. The underlying issues persist even though Apple has appeased people here.

It is too early to write off the campaign. Kate Bronfenbrenner is the director of labor education research at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. The Starbucks campaign is the exception, so don't measure it against the company.

More stores are expected to announce unions as soon as next month, according to organizers at the Communications Workers of America.

Some Apple workers think that the movement is dead and that media attention is important for organizing campaigns. Apple's corporate employees were able to organize on slack, finding like minded people who didn't want to return to the office and circulating open letters about their concerns Most retail employees can only access Slack from their devices inside the stores, making it hard to organize and inspire workers to take action.

The director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University says that media attention is critical. People at Starbucks, Trader Joe's, Apple, or REI will often say that they've been inspired by Starbucks and Amazon union campaigns.

At Apple, where the company has a lot of money to spend on union busting and the culture of secrecy filters down to the frontlines, workers are less likely to support unions on social media.

Apple employees in Maryland organized for more than a year before they decided to unionize. In favor of the union, the vote was 65-33. The first Starbucks store that was unionized had 19 yes votes and 8 nos.

"This isn't Starbucks, where you have 10 employees and can make the decision to organize quickly." He took a lot of planning and education. Before taking this thing public, we painstakingly set up our dominos.

Workers in Towson are about to negotiate a contract. Kevin is a member of the bargaining committee. We have been reaching out to other stores. It isn't silent because stores are trying to organize as quietly as possible to not bring the wrath that we got or that Atlanta got.

There is tension between those who voted for the union and those who did not. The no votes have started to lodge spurious HR complaints against the organizers, according to one employee. The no votes got a little militant. They tried to get their people to vote for the bargaining committee, but they didn't get enough votes.

It is possible that the concessions Apple has made regarding pay, along with the company's overt anti-union messaging, have been effective at squashing support for the union. An employee in Chicago believes that there is a lack of interest because of how large Apple is. In-store level management might be able to stop union efforts. If we were to try and do a formal push, my fear is that our store or market leader would just shut it down.

Organizers say this is just part of the process. CWA is meeting with workers weekly to teach them how to organize. There is still union organizing going on at Apple stores. Beth Allen is the communications director at CWA. Apple stores are large, many with over 100 employees, and organizing is a series of one-on-one conversations between workers about the issues they are facing and how having a union can give workers more power to address those issues

Getting the base ready to go is one of the things we are doing. We are getting ready for a fight.