CNN Business
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Apple workers in Oklahoma City have voted to form the second-ever union at one of the company’s U.S. stores, the latest sign that organizing efforts are gaining momentum inside and outside the workplace. technology and retail industries.
In a preliminary tally by the National Labor Relations Board on Friday evening, 56 workers, or 64% of those who voted at Apple’s Penn Square Mall store, voted to be represented by the Communication Workers of America, and 32 voted against. . Turnout was strong, with 88 of the 95 potential workers taking part in the vote.
The union victory comes four months after employees at Apple stores in Towson, Maryland made history by voting to form Apple’s first unionized location in the United States. At the end of June, the NLRB officially certified victory in the union elections.
Workers at both sites said they were looking to unionize in a bid to have more say in running their stores. Some also said they were inspired by union pressure this year at Amazon and Starbucks.
Apple did not directly address the voting results when asked to comment on Friday.
“We believe that the open, direct and collaborative relationship we have with our valued team members is the best way to provide a great experience for our customers and our teams,” the company’s statement read. “We are proud to offer our team members solid compensation and exceptional benefits. Since 2018, we’ve increased our US departure rates by 45% and made many significant improvements to our industry-leading benefits. »
According to Leigha Briscoe, one of the store’s organizing committee members, the vote was about what the employees leading the organizing effort expected.
“We felt like we had majority support, and as long as a people came out and voted, we would win,” Briscoe told CNN Business Friday night after the vote count.
Briscoe has been a store employee for six years. She said employees who wanted to form a union approached CWA, rather than CWA trying to organize the store on its own.
Briscoe, 28, is typical of many young workers leading successful national labor organizing campaigns in the wake of the pandemic. Many of the successful efforts, such as at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York, and more than 200 Starbucks stores nationwide, were spearheaded by workers in their 20s or early 30s.
Between January and July this year, there were 826 union elections, up 45% from the number held in the same period of 2021, according to a CNN analysis of NLRB data. And the unions’ 70% pass rate in those votes is much better than the 42% pass rate in the first seven months of 2021.
But only 41,000 potential union members were eligible to vote in the 2022 election. Even if the unions had won all those votes — NLRB data does not break down the number of workers working at each company holding a vote — that would only be a small fraction of the more than 100 million American corporate workers who do not belong to a union, according to Labor Department statistics.
The retail sector has a much lower unionization rate than some other industries. Data from the Labor Department shows that only 4.4% of retail workers nationwide are members of unions, compared to 6.1% of employees working in companies overall.
Including government employees, only 10.3% of workers nationwide are unionized, about half the rate of unionization in 1983, the first year it was tracked by the Labor Department, when union membership represented 20.1% of the country’s workers.
Oklahoma is not particularly fertile ground for union efforts. Data from the Labor Department shows that only 5.6% of workers overall are unionized, just over half the national rate of 10.3%.
