The U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) said on Friday that Apple Inc. retail workers in Oklahoma voted to form a union. This is the second Apple Inc. store in the U.S. to do this.
The employees at the Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) store in Oklahoma City’s Penn Square voted 56 to 32 in favour of joining the Communications Workers of America Union (CWA), giving the union the needed majority.
During the pandemic, the push to organise spread to new industries because people were worried about safety on the job. Companies like Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN), Starbucks Corp. (NASDAQ:SBUX), and others have kept moving forward.
Related: Apple will release 5G in India in December as part of a push for early adoption.
The workers, who call themselves the Penn Square Labor Alliance, wanted to join the CWA to address issues like fair pay, career development, and COVID-19 health and safety concerns.
When Reuters asked the NLRB for a comment, the board did not answer right away.
“What really did it for us was seeing our peers at other Apple Stores, Starbucks, and other companies start to demand better for themselves,” said Kevin Herrera, a part-time Apple specialist and one of the main organisers at the Oklahoma City location.
According to a press release from the CWA, an unfair labour practise charge was filed by the CWA in early October. The charge says that Apple managers at the Oklahoma location told workers that supporting the union was pointless, threatened to take away benefits from workers who supported the union, spied on workers without their permission, and questioned workers.
Apple didn’t say anything about the claims.
Apple said in a statement, “We think the open, direct, and collaborative relationship we have with our valued team members is the best way to give our customers and our teams a great experience.”
“We’re proud to pay our team members well and give them a lot of great benefits. “Since”Since 2018, we’ve raised our starting rates in the US by 45% and made a lot of big changes to our industry-leading benefits, like adding new programmes to help with education and family lfe “the business added.
In June, Apple workers near Baltimore, Maryland, voted to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.
In May, the CWA took back an election petition for Apple workers in Atlanta, Georgia. The CWA said that Apple had broken federal labour law many times, and the rising number of COVID infections among store workers made it impossible to have a fair election.
Related: India will put pressure on Apple and Samsung to add 5G software to phones more quickly.
On September 30, a regional NLRB office said that Apple tried to stop a union campaign at a store in New York City illegally by questioning workers and telling them they couldn’t leave pro-union flyers in a break room.
Last year, some current and former Apple employees started using the hashtag #AppleToo to criticise the company’s working conditions online.
The Apple website says that the company has 272 stores in the United States.
