Companies Are Taking a Harder Line on Union Organizers, Workers Say

Gemma Wyatt stands outside the Apple Store in the Country Club Plaza shopping mall in Kansas City, Mo., on May 11, 2023.

Apple said it had not disciplined or fired any workers in retaliation for union activity. “We strongly deny these claims and look forward to providing the full set of facts to the NLRB,” a spokesperson said. “You’re espousing these values but saying this other organization claiming the same values” — the union — “isn’t good for your workforce,” said David Pryzbylski, a labor lawyer at Barnes & Thornburg who represents employers. “It puts you in a little bit of corner.”Once the union wins a few elections, however, “you pull out all the stops,” Pryzbylski said.

And in advance of a recent union election at an REI near Cleveland, management sought to exclude certain categories of workers from voting, according to the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. It said the chain, a co-op that sells recreational gear, had made no such challenge in two previous elections, in which workers voted to unionize.

Across the companies, the shift is such that some organizers look back on their union campaigns’ early days with an odd measure of nostalgia. According to workers, the company became more aggressive once union organizers made inroads. Around the time that employees in Oklahoma City filed for a union election in September, managers at the Kansas City store disciplined several who supported unionizing for issues related to tardiness or absences that other workers typically have not been punished for, union backers said.

John Logan, a professor at San Francisco State University who is an expert on anti-union campaigns, said companies often considered the potential dissatisfaction of customers, investors and even white-collar corporate employees when calibrating their response to a union campaign. Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz was quick to push back against such accusations while testifying before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in March, telling one senator, “I take offense with you categorizing me or Starbucks as a union-buster.”

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