Last Updated on December 20, 2022, 11:27 AM | Published: November 6, 2022
OKLAHOMA CITY — Metro Apple employees are pressing forward with a busy schedule ahead as they prepare for contract negotiations with the corporation.
Meanwhile, managers continue to resist the effects of the victory.
Since winning their union election to create a local within Communications Workers of America (CWA,) the Organizers have continued efforts to solidify their organization.
Next steps
According to Michael Forsythe, Genius Admin and union organizer, there are three things that Penn Square Labor (the name the local has adopted) needs to do before negotiations can begin:
- Elect a bargaining committee
- Survey the store
- Draft their first proposal
In order to negotiate, they plan on having a seven-member bargaining committee. That number could change. The store employees need to be surveyed in order to figure out what needs to be in the proposal.
In regard to the timeline, Forsythe said, “Towson [Towson, Maryland store was the first in the U.S. to unionize] is hoping to be there by the end of this month. It gives us some kind of timeline. They won back in June, so it looks like about a five-month process.”
Now that they’ve won their union election, Penn Square Labor has been working on building solidarity with all workers – even the workers who voted “no”. They want the “no” voters to be involved in the discussion.
According to Forsythe, “There are still some disagreements, but the consensus among bargained employees is to remain amicable first and foremost and to have constructive discussion.”
“We’ve been working on getting them involved if they choose to do so, encouraging some to consider steward or bargaining committee positions”, he added.
Uncertainty in management
In Forsythe’s words, the relationship with management is “very touch and go”. Apple management is split between some who treat everyone equally as possible and some who clearly aren’t happy with the store unionizing.
Some of the unhappy managers have been sending mixed messages by contradicting existing policy. For example, Communications Workers of America (CWA) tried to deliver cupcakes to the Apple Store as a gift. They were rejected by the management team, despite having a more lenient policy in the past.
“Many of us with tenure at the Penn Square Apple Store are aware that the company’s stance on gifts to employees that are specifically perishable by nature is that they are to be brought to the break room for ALL employees to collectively enjoy.”, read Penn Square Labor’s tweet.
That’s not the only way these situations have been handled. The twitter thread continued, “We have historically wandered outside of policy and if the gift of food from a customer was intended for a specific employee, our management team has held them in the manager’s office until said employee could guarantee they were the first to get to enjoy said gift.”
Weingarten cards not allowed
Also, not allowed by management is the passing around of “Weingarten” cards on company time.
The management team justified this by citing their “regularly enforced solicitation and distribution policy”.
The Weingarten Decision is a landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that gave workers certain rights to union representation during an investigative meeting from management.
After the Apple Store publicly petitioned in September, at no point were they told they were unable to solicit support for the union on company time. “In fact, we were specifically told we WERE able to discuss union related topics at work, yet another contradiction to regular enforcement.”, the tweet read.
According to Penn Square Labor’s thread, employees have been allowed to work with their small businesses. “Employees have regularly been permitted to talk about their own small businesses at work, even use internal messaging systems as a means to solicit donations for good causes.”
Why policy has changed in regard to the union is still unclear.
Limited comms among employees
Another thing Apple’s management has done is to take away the “daily question board”. The daily question board was used to post sticky notes for people to see.
“In addition, the removal of the daily question board that employees were able to answer with personalized sticky notes, shortly after employees began answering with pro-union messaging, we believe is a clear pattern of biased behavior against union activity.”, said the tweet.
“We are incredibly disappointed that the previous position of our management team that they would respect the outcome of the election is not proving to be consistent with their actions”, Penn Square Labor tweeted.
Despite all this, Forsythe remains optimistic that Apple will show up to the table for negotiations.
“The message we got from the company is that they WILL respect that decision and that they will come to negotiate”, Forsythe concluded.
Alex Gatley covers labor activities in the state of Oklahoma.
