Unionizing REI workers in Manhattan have launched a petition requesting that the outdoor equipment company stop its union busting campaign.
REI retail workers in SoHo filed to unionize last month after the company refused to voluntarily recognize the union. Even though the company consistently touts its supposed progressive values and cooperative working environment, the company has pulled out intimidation tactics and other anti-union moves in recent weeks.
In the petition, REI Union SoHo says that their employer has been forcing workers to attend anti-union meetings with company executives as well as one-on-one meetings with management. Management has posted “an excessive amount” of anti-union flyers to crowd out the union’s flyers, and has evidently suspended promotion opportunities, according to the union.
“Despite all of these scare tactics, we are more united than ever in our belief that a union is the best way forward for all of us,” the workers wrote to REI CEO Eric Artz. “We, the workers of REI Union SoHo, deserve a free and fair union election. We are calling on REI to immediately halt all union-busting practices, and to remain neutral as workers vote on union representation.”
The workers have filed for representation with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). If they are successful, the REI workers will form the company’s first union.
Though the company touts that it’s a “Co-Op” between workers and customers, employees say management often doesn’t hold true to its purported values.
Workers say that they need union representation due to unsafe working conditions during the pandemic and “a tangible shift in the culture at work that doesn’t seem to align with the values that brought most of us here,” organizer Graham Gale said in a statement last month.
Much like Starbucks organizers have done, REI Union SoHo has quoted the company’s own supposed values against it as executives attempt to union bust.
“We believe a union will benefit us for several familiar reasons. First, *we go further together*. To us, that means employees need a seat at the table to collaboratively develop our agreements with you,” the workers wrote in a Twitter thread last month. “We know that with a union, we’ll all be able to *hold ourselves to a higher standard* by continuing to set an example for the rest of the retail industry as a company that respects the voices of its staff at all levels.”
“Frankly, we love REI,” the workers said. “Collectively, we have decided that a union is the best way to guarantee that REI continues to be a workplace we love.”
Progressive customers have been frustrated with the company’s union busting — frustration that intensified last week when the company released a 25-minute podcast on its anti-union website in which Artz co-opted the language of Indigenous and LGBTQ social movements to argue against unionization. Like many union busters before him, Artz insists that the company is pro-union — just not for its own employees.
Similarly to Starbucks’s anti-union website, REI’s site is chock full of misinformation about unions and contains vague threats about how any union contract resulting from negotiations might end up cutting hours or benefits for employees – which would likely only happen because the company didn’t offer a fair contract.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
After the election, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy