Apple store employees in a Baltimore suburb voted to unionize by a nearly 2-to-1 margin on Saturday, a union said, joining a growing push across US retail, service and tech industries to organize for greater workplace protections.
The Apple retail workers in Towson, Maryland, voted 65-33 to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Worker (IAM), the union said.
The result requires confirmation and certification by the National Labor Relations Board.
Photo: AFP
Union organizing in a variety of fields has gained momentum recently after decades of decline in US union membership. Organizers have worked to establish unions at companies including Amazon.com Inc, Starbucks Corp, outdoors retailer REI and Google parent company Alphabet Inc.
IAM and the Apple employees who sought to join said they sent Apple CEO Tim Cook notice last month that they were seeking to organize a union. The statement said their motivation was to seek “rights we do not currently have,” adding that workers had recently organized in the Coalition of Organized Retail Employees.
IAM president Robert Martinez Jr. called on Apple to respect the election results and to let the unionizing employees fast-track efforts to secure a contract at the Towson location.
It remains unclear what steps might follow the vote in Towson. Labor experts say it is 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 a backdrop of other US labor organizing efforts.
Amazon workers at a warehouse in New York City voted to unionize in April, the first successful US organizing effort in the retail giant’s history.
However, workers at another Amazon warehouse on Staten Island overwhelmingly rejected a union bid last month.
Meanwhile, Starbucks workers at dozens of US 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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