President Joe Biden laughs during the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, DC, on April 30, 2022.
NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images
- President Biden says he’s “proud” of Apple retail workers in Maryland who recently voted to unionize.
- “Workers have a right to determine under what condition they are going to work or not work,” he said.
- This weekend, staff at the Towson Town Center Apple Store near Baltimore became Apple’s first retail workers to vote to unionize in the US.
Apple store workers in Maryland recently voted for unionization in a historic moment for the tech giant’s retail staff, and their win has gotten them the president’s attention.
President Biden praised the workers at the Towson Town Center Apple Store near Baltimore for voting to join a union.
“I am proud of them,” Biden told reporters on Monday, according to Reuters. “Workers have a right to determine under what condition they are going to work or not work.”
“Everybody is better off, including the final product is always better off (because of unions),” added Biden, who is considered the most pro-union US president in decades.
On Saturday, 65 staff members at the Towson store voted in favor of unionization, and 33 were opposed.
Other Apple stores have taken steps to form a union. Employees at Apple’s Grand Central store in New York have reportedly started collecting signatures to unionize. Workers at the Oxmoor Center Apple store in Louisville, Kentucky, have announced a union drive of their own, according to Bloomberg Law.
But workers claim they’re facing intimidation from Apple to deter them from unionizing. Employees at Apple’s Cumberland Mall location in Atlanta reportedly withdrew their request for a union vote days before it was set to begin, alleging the tech giant conducted “a systematic, sophisticated campaign to intimidate them and interfere with their right to form a union.”
Last month, leaked audio recordings showed Apple’s senior vice president of retail and people, Deirdre O’Brien, telling the company’s 58,000 retail workers she had concerns about unionizing.
“I worry about what it would mean to put another organization in the middle of our relationship, an organization that does not have a deep understanding of Apple or our business, and most importantly, one that I do not believe shares our commitment to you,” O’Brien told workers, according to Vice, which published some of the audio.
Are you an Apple retail worker? Contact this reporter at [email protected] from a non-work device.
