We'll go in there, we'll make proposals and we get back, well, here's our counter after three hours of negotiating,
and it's a screenshot of the web page of,
you know, what our current policy is. It's been for me now, looking
back, exactly what I would have expected from Apple, both as an internal employee,
knowing how Apple likes to talk to itself about their ideals and actions and things.
They are master gaslighters. (Clip)
Companies are nothing more
than a collection of people. And so by extension,
all companies should have values. And then we're also seeing the tactic of draw it out
for as long as humanly possible. (Narrator)
In June 2022, workers at an Apple Store in Towson, Maryland, voted to unionize
with the Machinists Union. Two years later, they're still negotiating
a first contract with the tech giant and are nowhere near the finish line. The biggest things that we're going
for is fair wages. Fair raises to keep up with inflation,
to keep up with the cost of living, to be able to work this job
and to be able to, you know, afford a place to live
and your groceries and your transportation,
and living comfortably without having to struggle.
We're asking for a 6% wage increase. (Eric Brown)
Seeing the profits and seeing things like,
you know, huge stock buybacks and things like that, it gets you a little upset
that we're negotiating over trying to get more than a, you know,
a 2% raise or something like that. Right? It's showing that like clearly there's money there. (Narrator)
Workers invited us behind the scenes
during their most recent round of bargaining,
and revealed a dark side of Apple that has emerged
since they won their election. And I’ve always been an Apple fan especially when
it comes to the technology. But I've really kind of opened my eyes to
how corporations work. After we won
and we went into this status quo type state, there was, it started off
still a little rocky. It was a lot of relationships
that needed to be repaired because
the anti-campaigning was brutal. And it was meant to pit,
you know, workers against each other. If we do talk about, like, the union or
any of the issues that we've been having, it kind of feels like
we have to keep things under wraps, even though
that's not technically the case. It just feels like any kind
of conversation that we have about the union is going to be punished in one way or another. We're seeing like 6 to 8 discipline
related conversations per day. Right after we voted,
they came out with a new scheduling system and scheduling policy
that they did not role out to our store. A lot of the things that they changed were some of the things
that we were actually asking for, as far as being able
to take one weekend day off or take two weekdays off consecutively, like a Tuesday
and Wednesday if you wanted to. For Apple retail in general,
it's supposed to be that you have four hours of customer facing time. And because certain things change
with the hours of the mall itself, we've had to change our availability where
our mall used to be open until 9 p.m. but now it's closed
or it closes at 8 p.m. which makes things difficult
for people who work a second job or who might have kids
that they have to pick up after school. We found that a lot of the women specifically who are affected
by the scheduling and availability, mostly women of color, including myself. And then most of them are part time and are mothers, whether they're single mothers
or they have partners. They won't budge. And it's unfortunate,
but it's affected a lot of us. And even that currently
is being kind of thrown in our face and thrown to some of the newer hires. “Hey, Apple came up with this
brand new system, but, you know, because we're stuck in this status
quo state, this happened after
we voted yes for a union here. So really, it's
the fact that you have a union here that you can't get some of these
new, the benefits of this new system.” (Billy Jarboe)
We had this health and safety committee
that we proposed, on the like third session or so. And
it came from a place of Covid concerns and wanting to be engaged
in a routine around the store safety. Initially, they responded to us like almost
scoffing in our face type of energy. Like, “We already collaborate
with the best health professionals. How could we possibly do anything? We don't need this.” Okay. And then flash forward to, I don't know, well, almost a year later,
an employee was visiting a different store and coming back and telling me,
“Oh yeah, they have this new health and safety committee
at these other stores. I guess
they don't have that at our store yet.” And now we're seeing kind of the effects
of all of that where we went from having, like, 130 ish, 140 people in our store
at the most to having 87 people now. Once we started preparing to bargain
and come to the table, that kind of went into the play of, well,
you know, the union isn't telling you guys things like, why aren’t you informed
about what's going on? (Narrator)
Recent NLRB decisions have established
that it's illegal to deny new benefits to union members,
but the meager consequences are meaningless to the world's
second most valuable tech company, with a market cap of nearly $3 trillion. (Eric Brown)
I think we may have had multiple sessions
before we even got, you know, the preamble down or the or,
you know, as far as locking down the address of the store. We felt that there was not enough movement happening for the amount of time
that we were spending at the table and trying to bargain. Apple didn't really seem like they wanted
to work with us, which is why we, ended up putting up ULP charges against them. (Narrator)
As a result, a mediator was hired to work
with the two sides, leading to small but concrete progress. Last week, Apple and the union reached a tentative
agreement on time and attendance. Financials are still to come.
And if they don't reach an agreement,
workers have already authorized a strike. What we really hope for
is there not to be a work stoppage. We really want to
just get a fair contract. We really want to get these ULP
charges taken care of. We want Apple to do the right thing, and we hope that all comes from,
you know, negotiating in good faith and let's get a contract. There's something magic that happens
when you teach somebody how to utilize technology
and make it relevant for themselves and have that, what we call “wow moment”
or “aha moment” where you're like, oh, shoot this affecting my life in a legitimate
way, type of deeper meaning sort of thing. I think that's what really draws people in
to want to stay, and that's who you want to be working
here, honestly. Of course everybody sees
like Tim Cook and all the executives during keynotes
and during things like WWDC. But when people think of Apple,
they're coming into the store and they're seeing our faces
and they're talking to us as the experts. And Apple
has this thing in their credo called, and it goes,
“the soul of Apple is our people.” And if they really believe that
and if they really wanted to put their money where their mouth was, essentially,
then they would, you know, bargain with us in a way
that felt a little bit more fair and a little bit more like they actually cared
about the people who are in the stores.
