TOWSON, Md.: Apple Store employees in a Baltimore suburb voted Saturday to unionize by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, a union said, with US retail, service, and retail to organize for greater workplace safety. and joining a growing push in the tech industries.
Apple The union’s announcement said retail workers in Towson, Maryland, voted 65-33 to gain admission to the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. The vote could not be immediately confirmed with the National Labor Relations Board, which must certify the result. A spokeswoman for the NLRB referred initial questions about the vote to its regional office, which was closed late Saturday.
Apple declined to comment on Saturday’s development, company spokesman Josh Lipton told The Associated Press over the phone.
Union organizing in various fields has gained momentum recently, after decades of decline in American union membership. Organizers have worked to unionize companies including Amazon, Starbucks, outdoor retailer REI and Google’s parent company Alphabet.
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Unions and employees who wanted to join said they had sent the Apple CEO Tim Cook Noticed last month that they were demanding to organize a union. His driving motivation was to seek rights we do not currently have, the statement said. It states that workers had recently organized into a coalition, or corps, of organized retail workers.
“I appreciate the courage displayed by CORE members at the Apple Store in Towson to achieve this historic victory,” said Robert Martinez Jr., President of IAM International, in a statement. He made a huge sacrifice for the thousands of Apple employees across the country who were watching this election.”
Martinez called on Apple to respect the election results and let unionizing employees fast-track efforts to secure a contract at the Towson location.
The union bills itself as one of the largest and most diverse industrial trade unions in North America, representing approximately 600,000 active and retired members in aerospace, defense, airlines, railroad, transit, healthcare, automotive and other industries. does.
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It was not clear what steps would be taken after the vote in Towson. Labor experts say it’s common for employers to drag out the bargaining process in an effort to take the wind out of union campaigns.
The Apple Store unionization comes against the backdrop of other labor events across the country, some of which were rebuffed.
Amazon employees at a New York City warehouse voted to unionize in April, the first successful US organizing effort in the retail giant’s history. However, Amazon employees at another Staten Island warehouse overwhelmingly rejected a union bid last month. Starbucks employees at dozens of U.S. stores have voted to unionize in recent months, after two of the coffee chain’s stores in Buffalo, New York, voted to unionize late last year.
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Many unionization efforts have been led by youth activists at the age of 20 and even in adolescence. A group of Google engineers and other workers formed the Alphabet Workers Union last year, which represents about 800 Google employees and is run by five people under 35.
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