Retail store workers formed Apple’s first union

The growth of the great referents of the technological world has awakened an interest in the workers of some of these companies to form unions, as a resource to raise their voice in the face of the needs they face.

Long ago we saw stories of this type in Google Y amazon. Now comes the turn of Apple, which after an internal election in one of its retail stores, voted in favor of the constitution of its first union group.

Workers at an Apple retail store voted to unionize

After a failed attempt to form a union in Atlanta in May, another group of workers followed a similar process, but this time successfully. At Apple’s Towson Town Center store in Maryland, United States, about a hundred employees participated in an internal election in which the formation of a union was decided.

The voting concentrated the majority of the preferences in the favorable option to unionization, with 65 votes, compared to 33 who expressed their rejection of the proposal.

Those responsible behind this union initiative are a group of employees calling themselves AppleCORE, an acronym in English for the Coalition of Organized Retail Sales Employees.

Regarding the proposal to unionize, the workers who raised this call indicated that they want to expand their rights, specifically to have a voice in the respective discussions on wages, working hours and safety. Two months ago, when this initiative took hold, the workers’ group issued a letter directly to Tim Cook, pointing out: “We have come together as a union out of a deep love for our role as workers within the company and for caring for the company itself”adding that “The decision to form a union is about us, as workers, gaining access to rights that we currently do not have”.

To break out in force, AppleCORE partnered with a larger established union, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

The aforementioned union process that was truncated in Atlanta, did not come to fruition, according to Apple workers, due to the presence of anti-union lawyers hired by the company and due to the closed position to this alternative that took part of the executive plan. Under these conditions, Apple made it impossible to execute a fair vote, the workers charge.

Although no other scheduled union votes are currently on the agenda at Apple’s US stores, efforts are being made to raise such instances in Kentucky and New York, with the support of the Communications Workers of America, a major US union, in the case of the latter city.