More Retail Workers are Unionizing. Is COVID the Reason?
A few weeks ago, Steve Buckley celebrated his one-year anniversary of employment with the REI on Houston Street in SoHo. After having worked many different places, including food service and political organizing, the 28-year-old sales specialist ended up at REI out of happenstance. “I needed a job, and they were hiring,” Buckley says.
But the job turned out to be more than just a job. Since entering the retail industry, Buckley became a member of the REI SoHo Organizing Committee and participated in the successful movement to unionize the store.
Buckley joined the unionization campaign because he wants to “change the economic dynamic and the economic relationship between us as workers and our employees.” He cites higher wages, but also the stability and security that a union contract can provide. “You can get a little bit more, but are you going to have actual guarantees that things will stay the same?” he says.
And following increased economic insecurity that forced Buckley to move back with his mother in January, he is working to secure the same stability he had growing up. His father cleaned floors for a living — but in a union job. “He’s somebody who has a pension guaranteed by his union contract, who has great health care, but it is not a reality for people in my generation,” Buckley says. “Everyday things are a little bit worse and a little bit more expensive in perpetuity. And that has been my entire adult life.”
Last January, the REI store in SoHo filed for a union election, and in March, Buckley’s workplace became the first of REI’s roughly 170 stores nationwide to unionize. By an 88-to-14 margin, the employees voted in favor of being represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). A second store unionized recently in Berkeley, Calif.
Such votes are unusual in the retail industry. In 2021, only 4.4 percent of retail workers were union members, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But more retail workers have started organizing since the pandemic, says Chelsea Connor, director of communications at RWDSU. “Workers were already having these discussions before the pandemic began, and then the pandemic accelerated those conversations towards organizing.”
This is backed up by the most recent National Labor Relations Board data on union elections, prepared by Bloomberg Law. In the first six months of 2022, 75 retail workplaces held union elections. This is an increase from 29 elections in the first six months of 2021 and 56 in the second half of 2021. And, 50 of the elections this year resulted in the decision to join a union.
The number of elections and union wins in 2021 was also high compared to pre-pandemic elections: More union elections were held, and a larger percentage wound up in favor of joining the union.
Connor expects the drive to continue. “Organizing has not dwindled in any way since those June numbers. Outreach that we’ve received from workers continues over the summer,” she says.
COVID made workers aware of their precarious working conditions, she says. “Coming out of the lockdown, workers were not being given masks, and they weren’t given the right filtration for their air systems. They were asked to come back to work in low-paying jobs with little dignity and respect from their employers.”
REI brands itself as a progressive company: it is organized as a consumer cooperative, and it currently has more than 20 million lifetime members. REI’s website states that they “put purpose before profits,” investing more than 70 percent of its profits in members, employee profit-sharing and retirement, and investments dedicated to the outdoors.
After the Soho store voted to unionize, the company stated that “REI firmly believes that the decision of whether or not to be represented by a union is an important one, and we respect each employee’s right to choose or refuse union representation.” The company did not respond to further requests for comment.
According to Buckley, REI employees had guaranteed hours before the pandemic. “They used to have some level of stability, predictability in your hours, and they took it away, and they still have not brought it back,” he says.
He recently transferred to a full-time contract, providing more consistent work hours and access to the company’s health care benefits. But when he was on a part-time contract, his shifts could total 40 hours one week, and 20 hours the next, making it hard to plan ahead.
