President Joe Biden had some phrases of encouragement Monday for Apple Store employees who simply fashioned the corporate’s first retail union.
“I’m proud of them,” the president mentioned, in accordance with the White House pool report. “Workers have a right to determine under what conditions they’re gonna work or not. And I think the thing that everybody kind of misunderstands about unions, they tend to be, especially in the trades, the best workers in the world.”
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers simply received an election on the firm’s Towson Center retailer outdoors Baltimore final week, the place employees voted 65-33 in favor of becoming a member of the union, in accordance with a vote rely held Saturday by the National Labor Relations Board. Apple has every week to file any challenges to the election.
The election outcomes at Apple observe comparable groundbreaking victories for the labor motion at Starbucks, Amazon and REI in latest months. The string of high-profile wins has union leaders and supporters hoping for a turnaround, with union membership now at a low of simply 6.1% within the non-public sector.
Biden has used the bully pulpit to advertise unionism, and in a speech final week on the conference of the AFL-CIO labor federation, Biden reaffirmed his vow to be “the most pro-union president” ever. “I promised you I would be, and I commit to you: As long I have this job, I will remain that,” he mentioned.
Biden has certainly proven a degree of public union assist that few, if any, of his predecessors have. In a speech final yr, he blasted corporations that attempt to intrude in union elections, simply as Amazon was holding captive-audience conferences to dissuade employees type unionizing. And after employees received a union election at a warehouse in New York earlier this yr, Biden mentioned, “Amazon, here we come.”
“Workers have a right to determine under what conditions they’re gonna work or not.”
– Joe Biden
In the case of Apple, organizing campaigns are already brewing at different retail places in New York and Atlanta, and the decisive vote in Maryland may encourage employees at different places to petition the labor board to carry votes.
Employees on the Towson retailer despatched a letter to Apple CEO Tim Cook final month saying they’d “come together as a union because of a deep love of our role as workers within the company and out of care for the company itself.” Apple opposed the organizing effort, and retailer managers had inspired employees to vote against the union.
