Apple, Amazon Facing Emboldened Labor Movement After Key Inroads
The labor movement is gaining momentum at big tech companies, with an Apple Inc. store voting to unionize Friday and unrest spreading through Amazon.com Inc. distribution sites in Southern California. Organizers say it's just the beginning.
Long seen as invulnerable to unions, Apple saw its staff in Oklahoma City vote overwhelmingly to join the Communications Workers of America, becoming the second store to unionize among the company's roughly 270 US outlets. Amazon workers, meanwhile, walked off the job Friday in San Bernardino, California -- the kind of workplace mobilization that used to be all but unheard of at the e-retailer, but became increasingly common during the pandemic.
Amazon faces an important test on Tuesday when the US National Labor Relations Board is scheduled to tally votes for an election at a warehouse near Albany, New York.
Labor activists are taking the fight to other tech giants as well. A CWA affiliate organizing at Google filed the latest in a series of NLRB complaints this month accusing the Alphabet Inc. unit of violating the rights of its subcontracted staff. But the unionization at Apple's stores -- with their gleaming designs and prominent locations -- could become one of the most high-profile symbols of labor inroads in the tech world.
“For decades, the modern retail industry has been entirely immune to even the most tentative unionizing impulse,” said Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “Now that is changing.”
Apple, the world's most valuable company, has been increasing pay and adding new benefits in the face of the unionization efforts. In May, Apple boosted its national minimum retail wage to $22 an hour. Just this past week, the company
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