The National Labor Relations Board determined that Apple’s tactics in pressuring employees at an Atlanta Apple store to not unionize broke the law.
The NLRB regional director reportedly gave Apple the option to settle or she will start the process of compelling the company to do so.
Apple anti-union efforts went too far
In spring 2022, employees of the Apple store in Cumberland Mall in suburban Atlanta filed paperwork with the NLRB to hold a vote on whether to form a union that would be part of the Communications Workers of America. But in May, the workers withdrew their request. The CWA accused Apple of conducting “a systematic, sophisticated campaign to intimidate them.”
The local head of the NLRB agrees. “The National Labor Relations Board’s Atlanta regional director also concluded that Apple held mandatory anti-union meetings during which management made coercive statements,” reports Bloomberg.
If Apple doesn’t settle, the Atlanta NLRB director Lisa Y. Henderson can issue a compliant, but this is just the beginning of a process. NLRB judges will determine whether the Mac-maker has to change the way it treats its retail employees that want to unionize.
The decision will have a large effect on the employees of other Apple retail stores that are also interested in forming unions. Workers at an Apple store in Maryland have already done so, becoming the first.
Ed Hardy has been writing full-time about tech for 25 years, and using it for much longer than that. His intro to Apple was a Macintosh Classic II (which he still has), but now he uses a 13-inch iPad Pro as his primary computer. He’s written for NotebookReview, TabletPCReview, and Brighthand, as well as other sites.
