New York, NY – Workers hoping to unionize at REI in SoHo are gearing up for a March 2, in-person NLRB election. The more than one-hundred store employees who have reportedly signed union cards with Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union [RWDSU] are organizing for better working conditions, including better COVID safety at the outlet, along with fair wages and more improvements. Workers had sought voluntary recognition of their union, but the outdoor equipment company refused.
Workers at the REI Soho store formed their organizing committee back in October 2020, and have been raising their voices amidst a barrage of anti-union tactics from the company. Workers say REI’s brand identification as “progressive” is at odds with its treatment of employees.
REI is a “member owned co-op,”which means that for a minimum payment each year, people can become members, which entitles them to a range of perks. But many of the co-op members have been adding their voices to that of workers on social media, letting them know that union-busting doesn’t align with their values.
Steve Buckley, a retail sales specialist who has been at the company for six months, and is a member of the organizing committee, said, “If you look at the replies on social media it’s literally all ‘it’d be nice if you weren’t union-busting.’ That’s where the public is at. And I think that is what we want. We want people to be vocally like, ‘hey, we love REI. Your workers love REI. Please do the right thing here so I can continue to feel great about shopping.’ Because there are other retailers that do what we do. We want to be able to do it the best and we need support to be able to do that.”
Sales Lead Tyler Mullholland, who has been at REI SoHo for four years and is also an organizing committee member, added, “People know REI, they’re familiar with the brand and they’re excited about the brand. And then they kind of get disappointed when they hear that there’s been a lot of union-busting. Not to be passé about it, but it’s kind of cliché to for a corporation to be [union]-busting. REI has a real chance to be the visionary progressive company that they proclaim themselves to be. If REI was to embrace the union movement or to host fair negotiations instead of contentious ones, it will have a big impact not just within REI, but it will have a ripple effect throughout the outdoor industry as a whole.”
Claire Chang, an organizing committee member and REI employee for almost five years, described some of the anti-union tactics deployed at the store. “We have seen not only the numerous, the excessive really, amounts of anti-union messaging. That’s literally printed out in binders in the break room. We have giant posters. We have a foam board thing with a huge QR code that links you to that microsite in the break room. There used to be whatever someone’s brought, snacks or something or free T-shirts or whatever they would put on our table. Now it’s filled with anti-union [stuff] like little square pieces of paper and it says all sorts of stuff that’s just meant to cause confusion and doubt and fear.”
Buckley detailed his own struggle with COVID and a store manager’s response. “And I think there was definitely something about the way that our store’s leadership responded or did not respond to the Omicron surge where we were just flooded with customers. And a not insignificant number of people got COVID at our store, and we’re not given support from our leadership team. I know while I was out on COVID leave, I received multiple phone calls from [one of] my managers to remind me when my first day back to work was. I got into an argument [with him] over the contact tracing policy. I was like, I can’t remember my social security number or birthday because I have COVID.”
Chang spoke about the feeling she gets from being involved in the unionization drive. “For me, it’s really just having a seat at the table, democratizing the workplace. It’s really, really important and it’s empowering. We’ve had a lot of policies change on us in the last couple of years, things like scheduling policies, labor policies, all these things have been changed on us on a whim. And it’s just being handed down from corporate with no say from us.”
The results of the March 2 vote are expected to be tabulated quickly.
