Apple appears to have taken its most aggressive step yet to warn its retail employees against unionization. According Bloomberg, the company recently held meetings at all of its approximately 270 stores in the United States with the intention of “discussing the risks of unionization.” The tone of the meetings was “consistent” across Apple’s retail footprint. Managers reportedly began with a prepared statement from corporate leaders before moving to the state of union negotiations in Towson, Maryland, the location of the company’s first unionized store in the US.
According Bloomberg, Apple management cast the Towson election, and the slow progress store workers have made in securing a collective bargaining agreement, “as a bit of a warning.” Managers relied on talking points criticizing union dues and the unionization process, including collecting authorization cards. “While Apple didn’t say so, the underlying message to the company’s tens of thousands of retail employees: If your store unionizes, you may be at a disadvantage,” according to Bloomberg.
Apple did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment. The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the union that represents workers at the company’s Townson Town Center location in Maryland, said it would share a statement Monday.
Bloomberg suggests that some employees viewed the meetings as a “scare tactic” and an attempt to “throw cold water on the idea” of unionization. Last May, employees at the Apple Store in Atlanta accused the company of subjecting them to anti-union captive audience meetings. For decades, companies were allowed to hold such meetings up to 24 hours before union elections began. In 2022, however, National Labor Relations Board General Counsel Jennifer Abruzzo claimed that captive audience meetings were a violation of the National Labor Relations Act.
“Forcing employees to listen to such employer speech under threat of discipline, directly taking advantage of employees’ dependence on their jobs, simply chills employees’ protected right to refrain from listening to this speech,” Abruzzo wrote last april. At the end of the year, the agency found that Apple had violated federal law in its efforts to discourage workers at its Cumberland Mall store in Atlanta from unionizing.
