The fight for unionization continues for Apple employees across the pond.
Workers at Apple’s White City London store unionized on December 12, asking the Cupertino-based tech giant to voluntarily recognize their union. Apple has until December 22 to respond to the request for union recognition, according to the United Tech & Allied Workers (UTAW), which is representing the employees.
The move by workers at the U.K.-based Apple store is the latest in a global unionization drive that is sweeping the company. In November, a store in Glasgow, Scotland, voted to unionize with the Trades Union Congress, a U.K. union. That followed similar moves in the United States, where a handful of different stores have applied for recognition by the company (though it’s not clear that any have been recognized by the company). The U.K. and U.S. drives follow a longer-running recognition of worker rights in European countries such as Italy, where 1,300 workers across 14 stores were first recognized in a collective agreement in 2013, and Germany, where the union drive began in 2012.
“They showed us that it was possible,” says one worker at the London Apple Store who spoke to Fast Company on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “We started to find there were lots of interested people within the UK. Suddenly, we’re a little less scared of talking to each other about it.”
The motivation for unionizing is simple for the worker: “It’s the same as any other worker facing the cost of living crisis,” the worker says. “We’re going to go into a recession. Money’s not worth what it was. We can’t afford to live in the town we work in. We can’t afford to buy things from the shop that we work in.”
Another employee at the same store, again speaking on condition of anonymity, claims that there is “a lot of stress and a lot of burnout in really, really huge numbers.” They’re seeking union recognition because they want to be able to negotiate over shift patterns “that are healthier for people and don’t create this massive mental health sinkhole that we feel like we’re in.”
In part, the issue is caused by poor leadership, claims the first worker, who says management “maintain[s] the aura of secrecy which usually seems to cover up complete incompetence in what they’re doing, a lot of the time. The worker says this leads to a lack of proper process in HR issues. “It’s not through anyone’s fault; it’s through no-one really having an understanding of it, or no proper training,” he says.
The second worker, who is long-tenured with the company, says he’s seen a culture change over the years he’s worked at Apple. The company says it makes big changes, but doesn’t actually enact them, unless put under external strain, the worker claims. He has been driven to join a union because of frustration at his ability to make change within the company. “I’ve tried for a very long time in my career at Apple to have a real impact and change, and it just doesn’t seem like a possibility,” the second worker says. “For me, unionization is a way of getting that.”
The worker adds that Apple has shifted too far away from a customer-centric model to one focused on hitting algorithm-calculated targets. “That’s incredibly exhausting,” he says. “It starts to have a really big impact on your mental health and mental wellbeing, and emotional wellbeing as well. This leads to the company really hemorrhaging talent.”
Apple has not taken the drive towards recognizing workers’ rights lying down. In May, Vice uncovered a document used by Apple to dissuade workers from unionizing. Among the talking points used by the company: “There are a lot of things to consider. One is how a union could fundamentally change the way we work.” (Apple declined Fast Company’s request for comment.)
Eran Cohen, a UTAW organizer, says Apple’s approach to the U.K. drive is indicative of the document leaked from the U.S.. “They’re not doing I guess what I would describe as ugly, union busting,” he says. “They’re doing more passive-aggressive union busting. Rather than: ‘Unions are bad,’ it’s more like, ‘Of course, everyone has a right to have a union. It’s just, we don’t want anybody to be coerced into a union.’”
Cohen declined to say how many workers have signed up to UTAW’s union, but did claim the entire union has doubled its presence within Apple in recent months.
Apple’s suggestively anti-union approach has gone down badly with those workers seeking representation. “Apple has traditionally been a very anti-union company,” says the first unnamed worker. “There’s always been rumors of people losing their jobs for joining unions; there’s this really widespread misconception that there’s something in our contracts that prevents us from joining unions. And that’s something that’s been set by management as well.”
(18)
