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Apple Store Employee Attempts To Form Union
An anonymous reader writes "Cory Moll, a part-time employee at an Apple store in San Francisco, is attempting unionize Apple store employees. The Apple Retail Workers Union is an attempt to fight for better wages and benefits and to address what he says are unfair practices in the company's glass-and-steel retail showrooms. 'The core issues are definitely involve compensation, pay, benefits,' said Mr. Moll, who has received little public support from employees so far, though he said he has emails expressing support. An Apple representative confirmed Mr. Moll is an employee, but declined to comment on the union effort."
Yeah, go ahead and form your "union". You will quickly find out just how replaceable you are.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Do you really believe that is easy? Getting a new job involves time searching for it. Also, not having a job even for a short period of time is not an attractive option for most people, which complicates the matter further. There's a lot of friction in the job market, which is why it doesn't work well at all without unions and regulation.
Reminds me that Americans are assholes when it comes to labor rights.
If you feel you're not being paid enough, ask for a raise. If you don't get it and you're still unhappy, then change workplace. It's not that hard. And this is even from a part-time employee...
I'm not fond of unions myself. I like the idea, but unions are like every other organization: they refuse to disband or become inactive when their goals are accomplished. For unions, once safe workplaces and decent wages are established, the next growth area for them is politics and that's the problem. But to play Devil's advocate here... I have a question for you.
If we do things your way it will turn into a race to the bottom. If you are not being paid enough (and actually have a legitimate reason to believe that), sure you can change jobs. That won't be easy in this job market but it can be done. The problem is, your replacement is going to make the same inadequate wage that you did and is likely to make less since they just joined and haven't been with the company any length of time. You have no guarantee you won't end up in the same situation at the new company you work for, especially in the form of added responsibilities with no matching increase in pay. When this keeps happening across an industry it serves to stagnate wages or even drive them down.
Just think about mobile phone providers in the US. There are several different companies. They compete with each other. You'd think this would have certain effects, such as at least one company that charges a realistic rate for text messaging that actually reflects the marginal cost of delivery. The first company to do that could seriously undercut the competition. Fact is, they all grossly overcharge for texting and they all make more money that way. None of them want to rock that boat. It's de facto collusion, of the sort that doesn't have to be deliberately pre-arranged. Why do you think that can't happen to the job market? If no employer will pay a wage that realistically reflects the value you provide for the company, you either suck it up or get a new skillset and find a different line of work.
A union can actually force an employer to pay a higher, or if you like more reasonable, wage. That can be the case whether the employee is you or someone else. They can increase the average "going rate" for a worker in your industry, something other companies do look at when deciding how to attract the talent they want. Unions are an answer to the fact that any single employee is going to be replacable and that employers generally have the advantage in the job market due to overwhelming resources and the effects of "organization vs. individual, let's bargain".
True that. One should negotiate one's wages with a multinational corporation as equal individuals, not go brute force with collective bargaining.
Here you go!
you can't remove the battery yourself!
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> Honest question, I just don't understand the attitude
It's about justice, agreements being voluntary to both sides, and reality reflecting the true economic value of labor.
In addition, there is a long tradition here of unions protecting incompetent employees, "pay for seniority", and other unfair practices. While it's highly imperfect, non-union places at least *try* to pay for performance rather than merely how many years you sat on your ass.
I can't find the link now, I'm sorry, but there was an article several years ago comparing US unionized steel plants to non-union plants. The ONLY profitable plants were the non-union plants. Their working condition were no worse than the unionized plants, and they were succeeding against foreign competitors in a way the union plants were not. When workers are protected no matter how lax they get, they get lax.
Ultimately you don't get to have your cake and eat it too. If another competitor (say, China) is willing to have labor reflect its true economic value, and you are not, well, your jobs go to China. We're seeing that effect now, and it is killing the nation as our entire manufacturing base moves overseas.
My industry is non-union and it is one of the last remaining one where the US has a domestic presence. Coincidence? Well, I doubt it. Obviously other will disagree.
Actually, under Federal labor law, you can't be fired for advocating unionization. If you live in an at-will state, you can be terminated arbitrarily, but then a) you're eligible for unemployment, and b) if you WERE agitating for a union, and fired "without cause", you can drag your former employer in front of the NLRB for a lengthy and costly arbitration process.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
Dude, that's complete bullshit. The majority of Apple Store employees are part time and don't get any benefits (except for cheap benefits like commuter checks.) Part timers start at ~$12 an hour.
Apple Store has a reputation for firing people at the drop of a hat. There's simply no value for them in retaining employees in the long run simply BECAUSE their employees are easily replaceable and the cost of retention is higher than the cost of training.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Unions are a relic of the movements that won us the 8-hour day, workplace safety laws, OSHA, the Fair Labor Standards Act, whistle-blower protection laws, retirement benefits, employer-subsidized health insurance... and that's just off the top of my head.
To understand recursion, you must first understand recursion.
Steve's real cool. You'll see.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Cory Moll was reported missing today by his family. They also expressed concern about a chrome statue placed in front of the local Apple store in Cory's exact image and dimensions. An Apple store representative said, "We wished to express our gratitude for Mr. Moll's concerns and have thus erected this statue, and will do so for any other employee who does the same."
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
They already have a cult, why not a union?
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Your disdain for the common working man is remarkable. As is the attitude that people don't deserve better until they're up the ladder pissing down on little people. It takes everyone from the laborer to the CEO to make a successful company and ALL of these people deserve a fair deal and some dignity.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
I think this asshat needs to take a long, hard look at the rest of the industry. He's working a retail storefront job. He's getting paid $14/hr when hardly any other retail job is going to pay like that, and Apple happens to offer very good benefits. Medical starts from day 1 for full-time employees, at least. Want to go to school? Apple will help you do it! The employee discounts aren't bad at all, either, usually 25% off.
If the employees are happy with their renumeration and benefits then the union bid will fail. If they're unhappy, it's more likely to succeed.
In Ontario, Canada there's a good amount of car manufacturing that goes on with quite a few different companies. GM is fairly prevalent to the areas to the east of Toronto (e.g., Oshawa), and all of the plants are unionized (AFAIK). To the west of Toronto, Toyota has a manufacturing plant in Cambridge. The CAW (~UAW) has been trying to unionize it for over a decade, and every time a vote came up, the workers have rejected unionization.
If you have an enlightened employer you don't need a union. I've never worked there, but from what I've heard, Apple is generally a pretty good company to work for.
If this employee has grievances and/or problems with the job, I would hope Apple would look at them and hopefully address some of them. If they're egregious grievances, and Apple is brushing them off, then a union may be the only way to rectify things. While the labour code has certainly improved since the time of Charles Dickens, it still takes resources to fight a legal battle if you've been aggrieved, and a union has better resources than a regular schmoe—who may be forced to get a second-rate settlement because they can't the lawyer's fee for proper 'justice'.
You can certainly go too far in the power of unions, but so too can you go too far in the lack of them and the power of large companies. The trick is finding a balance between the rights & responsibilities of workers and the rights & responsibilities of companies. Demonizing one or the other completely is just silliness.
YOU ARE EXPENDABLE.
Perhaps. (I have always liked the line (supposedly) from Charles De Gaulle: The graveyards are full of indispensable men.)
However, treating your employees like cogs (or used tissues) is not a good way to run a company (IMHO), or to keep morale up. It's why unions were formed in the first place: so that employees couldn't be tossed aside while refuse, and that they were treated with some kind of respect.
Having good benefits is a reason not to get unionised!?!?!?
Unions are there not only to fight for something new, but to make sure that benefits aren't taken away without a good reason. Getting quarterly results up is not a good reason...
Ah, gotta love the massive leap to conclusions and people kneejerking this shit. Retail employees are not highly skilled labor. They are not worth tons of money. There is a large pool of potential employees. You cannot expect awesome wages and awesome benefits in that situation, period. You can call it disdain. I call it fucking reality. You want to get paid a lot? Work a job where you're worth a lot to the employer. You can cry all you want about the big bad men at the top, but that's how it is. Supply and demand applies to labor. That's how it is. Furthermore, when these people are making better wages and getting better benefits than most in similar jobs, you can hardly say that they're getting pissed on. But go ahead, keep assigning your own meaning to what I write if that helps you continue your idiotic ranting.
It is the goal of producers to maximize profit. It is the goal of consumers to get what they want at the lowest price. Free market Capitalism is the system where producers and consumers are free to set that price.
But consumers never are free to set that price. When was the last time you went into a supermarket and say the to checkout girl "Actually I don't think that banana is worth that much, I want to pay 10% less". The people in the western world don't know how to haggle any more.
And if some idiot tells me that I can vote with my wallet I would point out to them that I don't particularly like starving.
The real reason the cost of living doesn't go down is because of the federal reserve. They are constantly inflating the money supply to slowly steal the wealth of the country for the politicians and wall street bankers. If there was sound money all prices including wages would be constantly falling as people saved and became more productive. The goal for the last 100 years has been to inflate enough to keep prices stable so that people don't notice the theft.
[citation needed]
No seriously. You need to re-examine your evidence. This has been going on in all countries everywhere since the "free market" and capitalism was invented. This is not a problem specific to America (land of the relatively inexpensive), but it's a problem with capitalism and basic human greed. The aim of the rich is to get richer. The aim of the poor is not to starve to death.
Please stop whining about how it's the government's fault, and realise that it's human nature to want more.
It sounds lke the union movement in the US has a lot of maturing to do. Unions in Australia look after the rights of their members and a big part of this is collective bargaining. Large employers have decent sized teams working out employment conditions, and the union (or group of unions) is a reasonable counter to this. Otherwise you have a team of 5-10 professional negotiators 'negotiating' with employees one-on-one.
When industrial action is called for by the more mature unions, participation is voluntary. I was a member of a union that represented clerical and technical people in the electricity and local government industries. I had the choice of not striking, and when I did I was able to record that as protected industrial action. It gave my supervisor's manager a bit of a panic as he had to record it, and it wasn't usual for a professional engineer to strike (just for the day). The blue collar union that represented the electricians had very high turnouts, and the 'association' representing managers and professional engineers didn't get too many people taking part.
Promotion is on the basis of merit in the power industry, and the 'last on, first off' rules are pretty much legislated out of existence. Some unions do make rediculous demands when they think they have management over a barrel, and sometimes that results in jobs going overseas. Heinz were put in that position, and rather cave in to Australian union demands they expanded a factory in New Zealand instead.
A union that cares about the welfare of its members is also happy for an unsafe or dangerous worker to be shown the door. If workers bypass safety devices on a machine then they will get little support from their union, and rightly so.
Perhaps the US is just a few years behind the rest in the maturity of unions?
"Why, oh why, would "the rich" want to keep people from bettering themselves"
You're misunderstanding their intentions. They don't want money (they've got that in spades), they want Power. The power to control humanity for whatever ends they see fit.
"You're either making the very old, very silly mistake that there is a fixed amount of wealth,"
You're right, wealth is not finite, but neither is human greed & lust for power.
Whatever you have, I can make myself rich by taking it away from you, no matter how small. That's because if I can take away just a small amount of wealth from a million people, I'm rich. There's an unlimited supply of asshats willing to do that. Keeping them in check is your 'price of freedom'.
To put it more succinctly: "What good is being rich if nobody's poor?"
On the subject of conspiracies, all I can say is God Damn the JFK'ers. There are real conspiracies against the working man. Lots of them. Their not even hiding the fact. You can go to the web sites of any right wing think tank and they talk openly about them. A conspiracy is just bunch of people working towards a specific goal. Stop confusing the right wing conspiracy to lower the standard of living of most Americans with nut jobs going off about JFK and space aliens. Until you can get past that they'll just divide and conqueror us.
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While I agree with some of your post regarding cost of living, I have to disagree with your statement about consumers never setting price. In a free market, demand will set the price once a product is past it's initial release. Once you get past the early stages where production is low and costs are high, the consumer demand sets the price. That doesn't mean someone can walk into a store and demand a set price, but if consumers aren't buying a product, they are forced to either cater to a richer audience if that's an option, or they make it cheaper, innovate to add features to make it seem more of a value, or fail against the competition and possibly go out of business entirely unless they lower their prices.
That model does weaken on consumables that are a necessity for most, like fuel. In those instances, the effect is blunted, but even fuel, if driven too high, will effect sales. It is directly measurable to demand. If the price is too high, people travel less, and demand drops, along with the price. If a local grocery store's price is too high, they will either become a high end store, or if there is too much competition, they will be forced to lower prices. If there is a war in the middle east, people become concerned that supplies will be interrupted and prices skyrocket.
Don't confuse a lack of ability to haggle with market demand on a larger scale. If a new energy source was discovered tomorrow that made gasoline optional or opened up competition in the fuel market, the price of gas would plummet.
That was a joke, right?
In case you're actually as clueless as that, we're talking about people who need to work at the Apple store to scrape by, not engineers making cushy 6-figure salaries. There's a huge chasm between having recruiters calling daily to poach you and not being able to take take off an hour in the middle of the workday because rent is due. You're one of the lucky few to be completely oblivious to how most Americans actually live. Work retail for a few months without using your current assets and credit- you'll get a real education. It ain't pretty.
No. Unions are useful in one case, and only one case: when a lack of industry regulation puts workers in peril. Unions were once necessary to combat hazardous working conditions, unreasonable hours, and mistreatment (i.e., verbal and physical abuse). In today's industrialized countries, strong laws and regulations exist to protect employees from these perils and thus unions are, in the vast majority of cases, completely unnecessary.
Today's unions are used not for protecting workers, but instead:
- bargaining for pay raises and other benefit increases
- organizing election votes along the union's party line
- making it unduly difficult to fire under-performing employees
- making it impossible (and sometimes illegal) to hire otherwise qualified non-union employees
- requiring that a worker join the union upon employment and pay union dues, even if she desires no union representation
So, unions probably are necessary right now in some newly-industrialized countries like China where "middle-class" just means "don't have to steal food anymore." But here in the good old Magnited States of America, our society has evolved to include strong worker protection laws.
Now, even if I were to believe that most unions had a place in modern western industrialized nations, Apple Inc. employees would still pretty much the last ones in the entire universe who would be qualified to join the trade union party. I have close friends who worked in Apple stores and they certainly did not think they were mistreated. Yeah, you have to drink a lot of Apple koolaid. And yes, they said it was demanding work. But the benefits sounded quite reasonable (certainly better than what I was getting at the time for similar work) and they gained experience, solid resume material, and tons of networking. I think most any Slashdotter will agree that most entry-level I.T. and retail jobs are far worse than having to pitch Apple gear all day long.
</rant>
They are not worth tons of money. There is a large pool of potential employees. You cannot expect awesome wages and awesome benefits in that situation, period. You can call it disdain. I call it fucking reality.
Show me the stone tablets where this is inscribed. Why should all the money go to shareholders or in bonuses to people who are already very well off ? Why can't a company offer awesome wages and benefits to all its employees when it can afford it like Apple clearly can ? This reality is what you make it.
You want to get paid a lot? Work a job where you're worth a lot to the employer. You can cry all you want about the big bad men at the top, but that's how it is. Supply and demand applies to labor. That's how it is. Furthermore, when these people are making better wages and getting better benefits than most in similar jobs, you can hardly say that they're getting pissed on. But go ahead, keep assigning your own meaning to what I write if that helps you continue your idiotic ranting.
So why can't solidarity figure into it ? Why make it impossible for workers to say: "this is not how I want to be treated and all of us are willing to stand up for it together" ? This is freedom of association, a basic right in Europe.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
I work as a non-union contractor in an otherwise largely-union environment. The general workers have one union and the managers have another union. Most of the people just want to get their work done and go home. I don't see too many differences between my contracting colleagues and the employees. The union is vocal, but has understood that not everyone can keep their jobs in the current environment. They accepted unpaid furloughs in lieu of actual pay rate cuts, and when the numbers clearly showed that wasn't working, they accepted that a lot of people had to be laid off. While I disagree with some of their stances, they're a reasonable union in my books.
OTOH, my dad worked in aerospace for the better part of two decades. Union actions were fairly common. He took part in them for a while until he saw union reps being driven up in towncars and limousines, wearing expensive clothes, and generally doing a lot better than he did. Eventually, he lost faith in them and started crossing the picket lines. He had an advantage that others did not, though. At more than six feet in height, looking every bit the biker that he was, and with most people knowing that he had plenty of other biker friends at the plant who had his back, no one messed with him or his truck or motorcycle. Other people who crossed the lines weren't so lucky.
Incidentally, his willingness to cross the lines and keep working got him transferred to working on military aircraft (tankers and cargo planes). He still says, many years after that company ceased to exist, that he was happier seeing through his work ethic and getting something done than being on the picket lines, losing money while union leaders haggled for weeks over a few cents an hour worth of pay or benefits.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Umm... correct me if I'm wrong, but this is how management works, and why there's a manager in every store adapting to what works best for their particular store.
Again, this is a little thing called "empowerment" which means their store managers can actually make decisions on how to best run their particular store. I'm guessing the cost of living differs dramatically across all the locations where Apple has stores, and store mangers could use the discretion to retain particularly valuable staff who might have an extra hour's commute, for example?
Now this one seems to be the crux of the matter. personally I find it hard to believe that store managers are queuing up to get rid of their best performing employees. I could, however, understand if a store manager paid particular attention to someone who might be doing decent sales, but had an attitude problem that could cause issues.
From that interview, everything he says makes Apple look like a progressive employer who empowers their management to reward the staff who add value to the business. This sounds like sour grapes from someone who has worked "in multiple stores" and can't get past the shop floor for whatever reason. Could it be the big chip on his shoulder noticing that other people seem to be doing better than him?
Philosopher (n) - a wise person who is calm and rational; someone who lives a life of reason with equanimity
Wages have been flat in the US for too many years. Labor in general needs to push back, and on that basis alone, I will support unions.
You should look around. The nations you speak of do have strong unions, and formal representation of labor in their politics. We could use more of that here, because people have been significantly devalued.
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Lets not forget Apple may report into http://www.theworknumber.com/index.asp
Its basically a credit report about your work history, and unfortunately the employee can not see what's listed in there because they do not fall under the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
So it's entirely possible "Fired for Unionization" could be listed in there and you would not be able to do anything about it, and employers will not show you this information when they pull things up on you. So you could be a Sr Engineer and they list your title as Engineer, and you apply for another job elsewhere claiming your Sr Engineer and they will just call you a liar and move on to the next person.
Employer-subsidized health insurance is a result of having to get arond WWII wage controls (see http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/22/is-employer-based-health-insurance-worth-saving/ for info). Unfortunately, it continued after the war, and the result is that people who lose their jobs lose their insurance (that being the majority of the "N milliion uninsured" figure that is bandied about).
Sorry man. You've been swallowing a lot of dogma whole, for a considerable length of time it seems.
Over the last 30 years, the average American has been exposed to more cost and risk than they have increases in buying power per hour worked, and it's escalating.
Health care, in particular, is a huge risk point, with a large cost. Did you know we pay more than any other nation for that? Did you know we pay twice as much per capita as the next most expensive nation, which is France? Our access / per out of pocket dollar, and outcomes are far worse than theirs are.
I lost my home and all I worked for because of our health care policy. Had I lived in a nation that actually does value it's people properly, that would not have happened. And no, I was not the sick one, sadly.
Risk and cost are on the rise, with multi-national companies doing what they do best, which is push cost and risk away from the enterprise. Where does it go? On the US citizen, that's where it goes.
Clearly, you've had little real union involvement. I've worked for myself, in small business with a union, and without, and everything in between.
Secondly, average wages are far down now, if you exclude the very high percentages. For average people, the waves of outsourcing have forced them into jobs that pay far less than their old one did. Happening all over the place, and that too is escalating. New job creation is not generally family wage jobs, meaning we are moving more of our work force to poverty wages, than we are employing them at family wages.
You go ahead though. Ignore the contributions of labor to our past, and also ignore the lessons of other nations like Germany, who actually do target the welfare of Germans with their trade policy, instead of here, where we make sure our big corporations get all they want, leaving scraps for the average laborer to fight over.
Blogging because I can...
Here in Europe the right to join a collective organisation is a legal right so Apple or any other employees can engage in free collective bargaining with the man. Heck, here we even have tenants unions where our lawyers are smarter and cheaper than their lawyers. This freedom can often be a huge surprise to some American Companies. For eight years Walmart attempted to colonise the German retail industry. They were unaware of a) cultural differences and b) the power of the Workers Committee. Their Orwellian behaviour, spying on employees, banning staff romances and trying to coerce the staff into informing on each other was not surprisingly resisted by ver.di (the union), the staff and the general consensus of popular opinion. The experience proved so unmanageable for them they eventually disposed of their German assets to Metro and left the country.
Sadly Huey Helicopters were not involved but would have looked so good.
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If you feel you're not being paid enough, ask for a raise. If you don't get it and you're still unhappy, then change workplace. It's not that hard. And this is even from a part-time employee...
What a standard line. You've clearly never worked in a hostile workplace have you? The "If you don't like it, there's the door" attitude is nice in theory. The In practice all that happens is any self-respecting ambitious individual moves on to some other job, and you're left with the disrespectful unambitious drips that can't work anywhere else. Often the employer just uses the high staff turnover to have a workplace full of cheap expendable employees, some middle manager gets a wage raise himself, out of all this. Costs saved from paying your staff less, neglecting the work environment are quickly wiped out by abject business failure. You quickly end up with employees who don't give a damn, you know the kind. Customer service standards will degrade, sales will struggle, you'll have more employees acting up, management will struggle with discipline, will have to be harsh. Showing up drunk or not at all and some outright bilking the business. Eventually, something has to give. You pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
I've been a middle manager in a hostile work place, I moved real quick on rather than standing my ground and trying to fix things. Later the union did move into the work place - a rather easy target due to the catastrophically low moral and flagging sales.
But as you say, people could ask for raises and make demands, you can't get fired for asking nicely and stating your case, and if you do, in most countries you can dispute wrongful dismissal. It's disappointing that more employees don't put up more of a fight if they want their work place to be better. It's just a shame that unions have to be paid to do it for them.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.