This is massive. I work at an Apple Retail store, and we've been organizing. This win for Maryland has been amazing for the forward progression of our movement.
Keep it up :). Labor has no choice but to organize together until demands for better working conditions and higher pay are taken seriously. Capital owns much of the political apparatus, so it's no surprise that a majority social apparatus (unions, here) eventually reacts to counteract capital. Let's hope it's enough, and not too little too late :/.
With Apple Towson unionizing, the movement has had a massive boost of forward momentum. I'm in an international discord channel for unionizing efforts at Apple and when the news was announced the chat was ---popping---
I'm curious how this will turn out. Unions of tech workers are unusual, because tech workers tend to change jobs every 2 years. There are few - if any - long-term tech jobs that would benefit from the usual union protections... overwork, pay scales, job retention, etc. I mean if you are a Bluetooth engineer and the product line drops their Bluetooth feature and goes with NFC instead... typical union protections could force the company to keep the Bluetooth feature, or else keep paying you even if your skills are no longer relevant to the product you were working on. Tech workers at a retail store double-down on all of those issues... these are not "careers", they are "jobs" people work for a short time - usually less than 3 years - and move on to another job. So now you are working in Marketing at a dotcom startup... 1. What does your Apple Retail Store Union membership get you? 2. Why would they even allow you to stay in the union if you weren't working at an Apple Store? 3. What benefits did you accrue in your 2 years as an Apple Store Genius that is going to help you when you retire? I'm optimistic that young tech people are unionizing. And I look forward to how they refresh and rebuild the union model from the grift/strongarm/mafia organizations they currently are, into something that benefits both the workers and companies in tech industry roles.
Unions are a modernization of guilds, and guilds arose to protect skilled and semi-skilled professions back to the Sumerians. "Tech" has become anything involving software in any way, shape or form and my washing machine has software. The reasons tech workers have largely been immune to organization up to now is it's a young industry historically fueled by passionate nerds who can be tricked into working too hard for someone else's "vision." Your every argument is a canard for "Tech Is Different™" which is the same oligarchic argument that turned "Luddite" into a pejorative in Elizabethan England. If I can't order a burger without a QR code? Tech is no longer different. I haven't seen the contract but I'll bet wage floors, benefit vesting, retirement and those things that salaried Tech™ workers view as their just due and feel totally okay denying freelancers because they haven't "paid their dues" (lol). Right now, the Tech™ industry is busily defending Amazon drivers pissing in bottles. what You work in a union when you need or want union benefits, depending on the labor laws of the state you're working in. You pay your dues, which the union uses to distribute benefits. When you no longer need union protection because you are not doing that labor, you take honorary withdrawal and your benefits are managed in perpetuity (IATSE locals in LA) or dissipated into corruption (IATSE national in New York, I ended up in both). Fuck, dude, time off, wage protections and a retirement plan. What's so alien about this? You buy groceries from union members and you don't even know it, why are you scratching your chin about the same protections being offered to people selling iPhones? Your mind has been SO POISONED that you think schlubs at the mall hawking iPads are "Tech™. The fact that the Apple Store workers in Towson are technically machinists matters not a whit - GEICO is the Government Employees Insurance Company and errbody can buy in. This is literally a bunch of people whose lives are being squeezed by Tech™ insisting that they deserve as much protection as grocery baggers and you're looking at a Brave New World.1. What does your Apple Retail Store Union membership get you?
2. Why would they even allow you to stay in the union if you weren't working at an Apple Store?
3. What benefits did you accrue in your 2 years as an Apple Store Genius that is going to help you when you retire?
I'm optimistic that young tech people are unionizing.
It's actually kind of contentious within the apple union movement that they used the Machinists Union. Most store are talking with the Communication Workers of America, and the long long long term goal is for each store to organize under the same union so we can all eventually exist under the same one together.
And I sincerely and fervently wish everyone the best. I've known sheet metal union guys, art director union guys, camera union guys, grocery worker union guys and electrician union guys and the local makes more of a difference than the national and the environment makes as much difference as the local it seems. I have absolutely no idea what union would serve Apple employees the best and trust that Apple employees are doing their due diligence.
First and foremost, Apple retail is capital R Retail. The product zone sells phones, the backstage team manages inventory, the genius bar team troubleshoots and repairs devices, and the creatives provide instruction on the devices. Many people I work with have been working Apple Retail for more than five years, several are at 10 years+ (I'm personally at three). 3. Retention at Apple is very high because the benefits we currently receive are insane. I work part time to accommodate for the creative endeavors I engage with. As a part time employee I get health, dental, and vision insurance. Not only that, my wife gets them too. Not only that, but you don't even have to be married for your domestic partner to receive benefits. The list of benefits goes on and on. Another benefit that results in retention are stocks. We have a ridiculously amazing employee stock purchase program. In my three part time years I have amassed $15k in Apple stock, including restricted stock units. I'm not leaving this gig anytime soon. 1. A lot more control over the work environment. Apple Retail (and corporate too) is a hierarchical structure, and you have to go waaaaay up the Apple tree to affect change. In our store there are several immunocompromised folks. As retail employees, and even our store leader, had no say in the relaxation of Covid policies as they were handed down from corporate. More control in that sense is one thing we're looking for. Additionally, I'm hoping we can codify the four day work week, just as unions previously instilled the eight hour workday. I don't experience burnout because I work part time. I know my coworkers would be happier if they could also work part time and still receive full time pay and benefits. A lot of what we're looking to do is see how ideal of a gig we can make this, at the world's most profitable company. 2. I'm not sure I understand this question. Are you asking if I'd stay in the union if I ever left my store?
WOW. Thank you for the inside line! My time at Apple was during the dark and depressing John Sculley years, long before Apple did any retail at all. I am SUPER impressed with the longevity of the employees in the store, and the benefits y'all have! That's all fantastic. I love it. And yeah - for your last question - my understanding of unions is that they make the day to day work better, but most importantly provide that support in retirement that simply isn't available from companies anymore. Union pensions are why people stay with the union for ever and ever. If you are 25, work at the Apple Store for 10 years, and move on to another company/career when you are 35... do you get to stay in the Apple Store Union? People don't stay in jobs for decades anymore... so what is the long-term benefit of being in the union?
"Vesting" isn't a concept borne of tech stocks, it's an ownership concept that's been part of retirement plans since the government froze salaries after WWII. You vest in your union benefits, which basically changes what your retirement looks like. Unvested? You get a lump sum. Vested? You get a lump sum plus your earned benefits. One thing unions have been doing since Reagan is increase vesting requirements. When I started in Hollywood it took 300 hours of union work every 6 months to maintain your union status. Then it became 400. They're talking about 450. I needed 5000 hours in order to be fully vested. That number is also in danger of going up. If you hit vestment you get a pension. If you don't hit vestment you get a lump sump upon hitting the retirement target. This is every bit yours as much as an IRA or 401(k). Of course, every six months I get a letter from my union letting me know what it's going to look like if they can't maintain their investment targets (pennies on the dollar). Your membership or lack of membership is irrelevant - if you were a union member in good standing when you earned your benefits, and you left the union in good standing when you were no longer an Apple employee, you get that pension and/or lump sum. Our landlord at the birth center is a staunch Republican whose last career was as a money manager at Prudential. We joust from time to time; he loves to point out that his union pension is better than mine because prior to Prudential, he spent seven years as a UAW plant worker making turbines for M1A1 Abrams tanks. The difference between a pension and a retirement plan is with a pension, the company/union takes your money and invests it for you. You then get a guaranteed payout based on the cumulative hours you worked. With a retirement plan you have a certain amount of money to play the ponies with under a tax-preferred investment regime. Retirement plans are abject retarded bullshit that should be abolished. Let me say that again: the current method of retirement in the United States is criminal and should be abolished. It is the stupidest fucking thing in the world that we all collectively decided that we have a better chance of taking care of ourselves in our old age based on the rantings of Jim Cramer. This was sold to us by the Reaganites and Milton Friedman, who basically wanted the management fees and flows from turning your retirement into Vegas Night at the VFW. In a time when Americans cared about their citizens, professional money managers were tasked with turning a little money now into a lot of money 30 years in the future. Now? Now the boomers get salty when a generation of kids turn to Wall Street Bets to try and scratch out some sort of non-dystopian future. For the record, people never stayed in jobs for decades - they stayed in careers. We definitely have this idea that grandpa got his high school diploma, walked into the Chevy plant and never left but the fact of the matter is, grandpa had a career that was pretty much the same whoever he worked for or wherever he worked because he was in a union that guaranteed a level playing field and equal worker protections no matter what sheet metal he was bending or welding or whatever. And just to be clear - I don't blame you for having absolutely no idea how non-dystopian labor laws work. But as an early-age tech worker? Holy shit you're the leading edge of the problem. In a non-predatory economy, a manufacturer's union would get your oath in high school and follow you around throughout your career, ensuring that your hours count towards your pension no matter who you're working for. But instead? Y'all normalized 90-hour work weeks with no benefits because there's a 1-in-100 chance that your worthless stock options won't actually be worthless any-fucking-day-now. Because you're "living the dream." Because it's revenge of the fucking nerds and if you're afraid to fail you're afraid to win. Tech culture is positively sociopathic and prides itself on it. This is the principle reason there are zero fucking women anywhere you look: the basic humanities of workplace protections are absolutely necessary if you want to, say, have a family which made the whole of tech entrepreneurialism assert that anyone with a family doesn't want success badly enough. but we're fully back to "you mean I don't have to sew buttons until my hands are claws" employer-employee relations and it makes me fucking sick. UNION CAMERA OP: $600/10, 10 hours go to your pension, guaranteed two 15-minute breaks, guaranteed 1 half-hour provided hot lunch, guaranteed another hot meal every six hours after that, guaranteed 8-hour turnaround, guaranteed worker's comp, guaranteed set medic, guaranteed safe environment, guaranteed ombudsman, guaranteed 1.5 time after 8, guaranteed 2x time after 12, guaranteed 10x time after 18 NON-UNION CAMERA OP: $125/24, we pay your airfare, we pay your hotel, you get $35/day to buy food, you're our bitch from the minute you step out the door And now you know how Discovery Channel took over the airwaves. The Food Network flacks I met on the plane making that $125/day were on cloud 9, because they were living the dream, because they had no.fucking.concept that they could do better. I'm fucking lucky. I haven't had to have a "job" since 2007. I'm also fucking good - I haven't had to have a "job" since 2007. So allow me to say from the outside? The reason "jobs" suck so hard is the culture "bosses" have created turns workers into cowering rats. Boomers on down created a "tech culture" that's basically House Elves from Harry Potter. We do our damnedest to treat our employees right because why pay people to hang around if they hate you and still they come kneeling with things like "please sir is it okay if I take two hours tomorrow to get this tooth abscess drained". Grown-ass women. With graduate degrees. Fearful of whip cracks. The reason nobody is taking jobs right now is that COVID gave Dobby a sock. I sincerely hope he tells his friends. Sorry for flying off the fucking handle. I'm just fucking disgusted to live in a society where a bunch of scumbag reg-breaking flophouse landlords get to be called "tech" because AirBnB has an "app." Where driving people around in your car after work is a "side hustle" because Uber has an "app." Where delivery drivers have the "freedom" to keep their seat belts unbelted and have a truckerbomb at the ready because Amazon has deadlines to meet. Unions fix ALL this shit and the Republicans have been so successful at convincing the over-30 populace that they don't deserve dignity or a decent living that people who should absolutely know better are querying random strangers on the internet to find out if the streets are paved in gold out in Towson fucking Maryland.
Great! Power to the people. Read the other day that the number of unionized Starbucks stores has gone from zero to over 150 in the past few months. What I don't undertand, though, is why unionizing is so granular in the US. Over here we have unions for entire branches of labor, so all McDonalds and Starbucks and other retail stores have one collective agreement even if they're ran as franchises. It's written in the law that collective agreements can be made mandatory for all companies operating in a particular sector. I'm assuming that's not the case in the US...?
State laws differ, which gives different unions different powers in different places, requires different structures in different places, and offers different levels of influence. But it's also important to note that the American experiment with socialism lasted from Huey Long's election as governor of Louisiana in 1928 until Reagan's election as president in 1980, with the bulk of American unionization coinciding with the New Deal and WWII. American unions also took a real blow from the unfolding of British labor history in the '70s. Fundamentally? The UK is a rump state whose future was over at the Blitz but it took 30 years for it to become apparent that two rounds of lend/lease and the slow-motion rebellion of the Commonwealth were depriving the British Empire of the resources it had commanded for 200 years. Things came to a head in '78 and the UK elected Thatcher, who effectively destroyed the UK as anything other than a generator of reality television and quirky humor. When air traffic controllers struck in 1981, Reagan took his cue from Thatcher and fired them all. See that abrupt rise in public unions in the '80s? Followed by a discontinuity? yeah. So on the one hand, you've got an embattled proletariat facing existential neoliberal warfare. But on the other hand, union employment, as in "I work for the union", is an extremely cushy grift. You make "union scale" for pushing paper around and showing up to other people's workplaces. Unions protect their own hierarchy first and foremost, and fuck the membership. I'm a 10-year fully-vested member of IATSE and my union is a clown show. Those who can, do. Those who can't, organize. Unions are also dirty AF. There's a reason the Teamsters are associated with organized crime, they're Mafia. Best way to be somebody in the Union is to be related to somebody in the Union. Thus, unions grow indolent and abusive; I had a project manager ask some of my contractors in NY once if they could maybe "hurry it up" because overages were costing us about $30k a day on a simple retail install. "Lady," the foreman said, "We got two speeds and you don't want to see the other one." This is after an envelope with $50k in cash was dropped into a mailbox in Brooklyn; it was an actual line item in the budget. Add to that the exciting adventure of "right to work" states, a Republican distinction that says "just because you have a union here doesn't mean you have to be in the union to do this." Washington is a right-to-work state. California is not. If I, a sound mixer, decide to double a violin in a score recorded in California, the violinist must legally be paid double. If I, a sound mixer, decide to double a violin in a score recorded in Washington, the violinist doesn't even get notified. Combine that structure with national-scale unions and you get exciting shenanigans like the one where my deeply venal, deeply corrupt union president took the national union to the supreme court because the Louisiana local bitched about jurisdictional issues. Note that Jim Osburn is a deeply incompetent man whose girlfriend made $140k a year to supervise an unpaid film school intern who answered the phone three days a week and who in the Year of Our Lord 2008 walked into a friend's broadcast truck to ask where the Nagra went. Go look up a Nagra. I'll wait. Unions are a net good, but power corrupts. In the United States, unions have largely become organs who protect mid-century dynasties at all costs in an environment where their extinction is a perennial goal for half the electorate. They have to survive in a patchwork of laws through legal, quasi-legal and illegal means and as a consequence, they are a subject of contention. And again, I say this as a fully vested member of IATSE whose grandfather was regional president of the AFL. Unions have been good to me. They have also been shit. I lost $20k because my union forgot to tell me "oh by the way you have to buy a ticket from Los Angeles in order to make that rate." I have friends who just got their healthcare taken away because SAG decided that they couldn't afford to keep their promises. All of Hollywood was out of work for four months in 2008 because a producer and his son-in-law concocted a scheme to break a million tiny production companies through force majeure. Unions are a bloodsport in the USA.What I don't undertand, though, is why unionizing is so granular in the US.
The very rich in this country don't like the idea of making less money, so unions are very much suppressed. The path of least resistance to getting all of Apple unionized is for stores to unionize individually and then from there to expand to a collective union.
I think eventually that would be the goal. When/if enough stores organize they may try to form a superunion across the company or join an existing service industry union. The crowing from Howard Shultz on this matter has been pretty hard to take seriously. “We give them Spotify memberships [sniffle].” Motherfucker made $22 million last year. One of the biggest executive:employee ratios around in an already highly inflated environment.
I am curious why you might find an employee preference for a music benefit objectionable. Pay ratio does not seem very illuminating. Starbucks, at 1211:1, is less lopsided than General Electric Company, with a median worker pay of $53,928, or Activision, with a median of $99,100. The ratio reflects the reality of international retail work. Hence the median employee is "a part-time barista in Canada" who made $12,113 in 2020. Schultz retired as Starbucks CEO in 2018. Kevin Johnson took over and was compensated $20.4 million in 2021 (base salary $1.61M, stock awards $14.76M, incentive bonus $4M). Presumably the board seeks a CEO that will maximize shareholder benefit. Suppose instead that the board sought a CEO to maximize employee benefit. Which should they prefer? 1) The status quo. Pay an experienced executive twenty million to keep the ship on course. 2) Fire Johnson and hire the most-qualified executive willing to work for $5 million in total compensation. Distribute the savings equally among the 383,000 employees. That's a bonus of $3.35 per month, a third of the value of a Spotify premium membership. Trust that the discount CEO will manage the company well and not lose market share to competitors, resulting in closed stores and laid off staff. 3) Fire Johnson and find the most-qualified executive willing to work for free. Hope for the best. If you favor option #3, you're in luck. Johnson retired in April and Schultz took over as interim CEO for $1 in compensation.If you ask our people, what are the two or three biggest benefits that Starbucks provides, No. 1 is Spotify. That’s what it is. The second is Lyra Health, and that is mental health that we’re providing to our people.
Partners frequently work in flexible, part-time roles, which has the effect of lowering the annual total compensation for our median employee. In addition, Starbucks is a global company, with approximately 120,000 partners outside the U.S. Therefore, the median compensation disclosed below is based on our global workforce and is not designed to capture the median compensation of our U.S. partners.
C'mon now you can do better than that. We deserve better than that, every argument you've ever gotten here has been good-faith. It's patronizing to argue that Starbuck's employees don't like having free Spotify as if every other similar job has no benefits at all. Dick's Drive-in, an equally-old, equally-Seattle company, offers health insurance, tuition and a child care allowance. Dick's, of course, has eight locations instead of 34k, despite being 15 years older. A legitimate debate would be about how that's not related to shareholder value and unfettered capitalism. As to Lyra Health - have you experienced it? I've got some secret camera footage here: Likewise, comparing Starbuck's to GE is disingenuous to the point of fatuousness. You're making median/mean arguments as if "average" discussions aren't designed to mask inequality. You didn't even break it up by the incredibly vague "consumer discretionary" category, in which it is revealed that Starbuck's is more unequal, on average, than Dollar General, Papa John's, Six Flags, Norwegian Cruise Lines or Target - the only food service companies with worse equality are Yum! Brands and Aramark, two of the most legendarily shitty companies to work for in the United States. The whole argument here, as you know, is that top-heavy companies are bad for workers... so gambits to bring in shareholders are only ever going to fall flat. But you know what, for the sake of argument, let's look at what the shareholders want. A cursory examination of the issue would reveal that executive pay has been increasing at pretty much the rate that dividends have been decreasing. Even from a John Galt standpoint, CEO largesse is bad for shareholder value. But none of this illuminates the real issue. Fundamentally, the game being played is not the one whose rules have been published. By inspection, a loose consortium of 34,000 coffee shops don't need a CEO or a board. What needs the overhead is the brand, and the reason to build brand is to maintain share price. Much like your trumpeting of Howard Shultz's "compensation". The man owns 20m shares; arguing that his salary is relevant is like pretending Elon Musk is an altruist because Tesla doesn't give him a W2. You aren't even trying in good faith to argue around the margins of the issue. Do better.
Your brief messages make it hard to understand what your concern is. Is it just that one guy got a lot of compensation? Where did that value come from? Did many people with a net worth under $100K buy and prop up the stock price? Did any of them also enjoy gains? As you noticed, the stock has lost half its value since 2020. Does that make the DoorDash dude half as bad? Does he get any credit for helping people get food during a pandemic?As Chief Executive Officer and Chair at DOORDASH INC, Tony Xu made $413,669,920 in total compensation. Of this total $300,000 was received as a salary, $0 was received as a bonus, $0 was received in stock options, $413,369,623 was awarded as stock and $297 came from other types of compensation. This information is according to proxy statements filed for the 2020 fiscal year.
Yes you're correct about the "superunion." Most stores are organizing under the Communication Workers of America, though Apple Towson used Machinists Union’s Coalition of Organized Retail Employees.