REI Workers in New York Vote to Unionize

The only union at the outdoor-equipment and apparel retailer was created after workers at a New York City store voted to unionize. The vote took place at the store.

The SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan was the location of the unionization balloting. The only Starbucks stores that are owned by the company are the three that have voted to unionize. Workers at two Amazon warehouses will vote in union elections at the end of the month.

The company is owned by customers who buy lifetime memberships, currently $30, and brands itself as a progressive company in the vein of Starbucks. The cooperative believes in putting purpose before profits and invests more than 70 percent of its profits in the outdoor community, according to its website.

The workers of REI SoHo are ready to negotiate a strong contract that will allow them to uphold the co-op's progressive values while providing the top-notch service customers have come to expect.

After the vote, the company said in a statement, "As we have said throughout this process, REI firmly believes that the decision of whether or not to be represented by a union is an important one, and we respect each employee's right to choose."

The professor of labor studies at San Francisco State University said that like Starbucks, REI attracts workers who seem to have an ideological affinity for unions.

"REI seems like another example of predominantly young workers who are not buying the arguments about unions being special-interest groups," Mr. Logan said in an email.

The average age of the company's workers is 37, five years younger than the median age of all US workers.

The fall of 2020 was when workers at the store began to organize, partly because they felt that employees who had been outspoken in raising safety concerns were not allowed to return after the stores were temporarily closed. Five weeks ago, an election petition was filed.

In a video conference with reporters last week convened by the retail workers union, a visual presentation specialist who has worked at the store for over four years cited concerns about coronaviruses safety.

Ms. Chang said that after the store reopened in 2020, managers asked workers how comfortable they would be reopening the fitting rooms, where employees are in frequent contact with apparel worn by customers.

The majority of staff said that they were not comfortable with it, but they went ahead and did it.

Steve Buckley, a sales specialist who has been at the store for about six months, said in the video conference that he was one of several workers who became ill with the coronaviruses during the Omicron surge.

The decision to let go less than 5 percent of its workers nationwide had nothing to do with how outspoken the employees were, according to an REI spokeswoman. She said that the store had limited capacity and that the fitting rooms had sanitizing supplies.

She cited a survey that showed that employees rated the company highly on a number of questions.

Several workers said they wanted to unionize because they felt that the workplace had become impersonal and profit-focused as it sought to expand.

There has been a huge push to sell memberships, according to a text message from an employee.

The workers said that the company flew in company officials to hold meetings with employees about the risks of unionizing and hanging material in break rooms, as well as creating a website that highlighted these risks.

Mr. Buckley said that a meeting he attended with senior officials in February lasted roughly two hours and touched on issues like health insurance. He said that the officials were yelling at them that they were wrong about the policies at the store.

The spokeswoman said that the company had sought to share information about unions, and that the February meeting was a long-scheduled training session for the relaunching of the company's membership program.

The professor said that the stores were usually not top-heavy with supervisors, which might have been one of the reasons why the efforts to discourage workers from unionizing weren't effective.

They operate relatively autonomously, with little managerial presence or oversight, thus giving ample opportunity to talk union.