21 ms·

Apple Is Union-Busting in NYC, Labor Group Alleges

122 points by carlycue 4y ago

quux 4y ago
https://archive.ph/b1xw3 https://archive.ph/b1xw3
floor_ 4y ago
Big yikes. I hope Apple doesn't push undeleteable U2 songs to their Apple devices.
- black_13 4y ago
faridelnasire 4y ago
What..? Yet another tech company who normally is pro any current social justice hashtag actually doesn't give a fuck about human dignity when push comes to shove? Wild...
readams 4y ago
Anything but immediate embracing of a union is called "union busting" apparently. The union presents its case why can't Apple?
- Miner49er 4y ago
  Apple allegedly broke labor law. If that's not union busting in your book, what is? Does it have to get to the point of Blair Mountain or something?
  - readams 4y ago
    Apple allegedly broke some new definition of labor regulations that don't currently exist. The NRLB is trying to expand this to the point that there's literally no action you can do to respond to a union.
- moate 4y ago
  1- Yes, most of us on the pro-labor side consider any effort to dissuade people from joining a union "union busting" generally. They're trying to "bust" the union by stopping people from joining. This isn't misrepresentative semantics, this is saying they oppose the union by their actions. The literal definition of union busting is "the activity of reducing or destroying the power of a trade union or trade unions". So yes, literally anything other than immediately embracing a union by management is, by definition, "union busting". 2- The first paragraph of the article says that not only did Apple not immediately embrace the unionization of their labor force, but according to the filing, violated US Labor law. I can accept this weird pro-management twisting of the definition of "union busting" to exclude legal opposition, but I do not understand how anyone in good faith can say that illegal union opposition techniques don't fit a personal definition of "union busting". You can argue that the investigation may determine otherwise, but the title does say "alleges" to hedge that.
  - randerp 4y ago
    not familiar with the details of organizing so there might be some naïvety here. are you saying it is a complete one way street? unions can not be opposed under any circumstances? if some employees meet to discuss the power of "individual agency" that is considered union busting? there can be no competing ideologies?
    - moate 4y ago
      There is a binary: Pro-union, anti-union. That's it. It's that simple. I'm not saying people aren't allowed to oppose unions, either ideologically or legally. If a jobsite is trying to organize, employees discussing "individual agency" is fine. But there are only 2 competing ideologies "union" or "no union". There are plenty of people who would accept the viewpoint that members of the labor unit cannot themselves engage in "union busting" because they aren't part of the management group (there would also be hardliners who feel that all people of all levels of the organization that undermine the union are attempting to union bust, myself among them, but I'm fine pointing out that there is another viewpoint) That said, any action that an employer takes to prevent unionization, legal or illegal, fun or boring, is engaging in "union busting". They have ways in which they are legally allowed to do this, but any attempt to describe anti-unionizations efforts taken by management as somehow not being "union busting" is disingenuous based on the definition of the term.
manuelabeledo 4y ago
> While the NLRB has previously held that companies can require employees to attend anti-union meetings, the agency’s current general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo views such “captive audience” sessions as inherently coercive and illegal, and her office is pursuing cases that could change that precedent. While it seems to be some advancement here, and the NLRB may make these meetings illegal, I wonder how we got to this point. It's an easy case to be made that anti-union meetings may be coercive. It's also completely illegal for company higher ups to organise, or for companies to meddle in labour organisation affairs, yet it is fine to push workers to not join unions?
- moate 4y ago
  >> I wonder how we got to this point. The glib answer is "Capitalism, neo-liberalism, and the lack political party that actually answers to/is beholden to the labor class". There's a lot of nuance in those 3 things, but if you study the history of labor struggles and policy in the US it's mostly that.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Easy. Ronald Reagan. Alot of people felt that unions were way too strong going into the 70s and 80s. Particularly as the “new south” became an onshore outsourcing destination, policy flipped.
  - moate 4y ago
    Don't you DARE let the Democrats, especially during Clinton era, off the hook. That was their turn away from unionism and towards the 3rd way the told everyone that they don't need union protection because in the new economy of the digital future everyone will have so many opportunities that the unions were a thing of the past and everyone will be so well educated they can't help but make a good living. https://www.lawcha.org/2016/11/23/bill-clinton-remade-democratic-party-abandoning-unions-working-class-whites/ https://www.lawcha.org/2016/11/23/bill-clinton-remade-democr...
    - Spooky23 4y ago
Spooky23 4y ago
CWA is usually an aggressive union. Not a good or bad thing, just a thing. In NYC, With a company like Apple, where you’ll get a press hit for reporting that Tim Cool peeled an orange at his desk, pushing stories like this is very effective. But of the day, it’s just noise.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
legitster 4y ago
I mean, yeah? It is not in a company's interest to be unionized. This shouldn't exactly be news. Even in this article, the organizers acknowledge that what Apple is doing isn't illegal, but argue that it should be. I get it. Organizing labor is tough. They're looking for some legal reprieve. But at the end of the day unions are fundamentally bad for employers. We can push for laws requiring them to roll out a welcome mat but we shouldn't expect them to like it.
- moate 4y ago
  You can't break laws in doing so. That's the news. "Apple is doing illegal things" is not the same as "It's not in Apple's interest to be unionized". We can and should expect the 4th estate to hold people accountable when they break laws in their pursuit of more profits for the investor/management classes. The fact that people are reading "Apple is doing illegal things in order to prevent unionization" and shrugging is indicative of the larger issue which is that anti-union sentiment has become so pervasive in the country it's essentially the default at this point. I feel that people should be mad that Apple opposes unions so much they're willing to commit crimes to prevent it, just like I feel that people should be mad if they found out that Apple was using iPhones to create a Batman like spy network. People should be mad when companies break laws and exploit them, not shrug and go "whelp, that's just them doing a Capitalism, hayuck!"
- JaimeThompson 4y ago
  >It is not in a company's interest to be unionized. Why not?
  - tomelders 4y ago
    I think they mean it's not in the best interest of the people who "own" the company. Those people want to minimise costs as much as possible and Unions get in the way of them doing whatever the hell they want.
  - colinmhayes 4y ago
    Unions increase labor costs.
jmyeet 4y ago
Just a friendly reminder that every charitable donation or cause that a company--any company--supports is marketing. A less charitable interpretation is "virtue signaling". Companies will pay millions to union-busting law firms because labor organization is really the only thing that will improve the material conditions of their workers. To anyone at Starbuck's, Amazon, Apple or really any other company, this should be all the evidence you need that you should join a union because it's the one thing your employer will spend millions to avoid happening. Ultimately, your relationship with your employer is adversarial. Don't forget that.
- ksec 4y ago
  >A less charitable interpretation is "virtue signaling". It wasn't like that before. Especially for Apple. It used to be borderline Marketing. If you could call it that. But Apple never did any of that. Steve doesn't even want his donation to be known. Somehow Apple went from one end of the Spectrum to the leader in "virtue signaling".
- Vanderson 4y ago
  Privately owned companies have the direct responsibility to care for their employee's and view their employee's as necessary partners to the company's success helps avoid _some_ of what you are describing. This is reliant on decent ownership of course.
  - becquerel 4y ago
    Unfortunately, even private companies have an ultimate obligation to maximize profit (or else they're overtaken by another business which will). This means that employers and employees ultimately remain opposed.
    - Vanderson 4y ago
      Nothing is in a vacuum, and employees (myself included) feel the opposite responsibility. I want a paycheck and to get that I need my employer to stay in business. There is a synergy there. Maybe this is a scale issue. As a single owner of a business I feel personally responsible, and my actions in business are the same as in my personal life. But with a business I share ownership with, I have less personal responsibility, therefore by default I am simply not responsible (and feel less so) about the effects the business has. Multiply this out to thousands of shareholders, where this connection of ownership -> responsibility towards employees dilutes to the point of non-existence.
ralmidani 4y ago
> requiring employees to attend mandatory anti-union speeches And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984.”
- ughitsaaron 4y ago
  I’m obsessed with that ad. It’s such a fascinating cultural artifact. It’d be interesting to explore how it compares with early Ford advertisements for the Model-T (which also made a lot of claims about the freedom and independence it offered consumers).
- sershe 4y ago
  How is this different from mandatory training we all have to do on customer data privacy, compliance, diversity and inclusion, etc.? It's work time. You get paid to do it. I think unions are some of the most evil, corrupt, harmful institutions to have ever existed. On par with drug cartels and such in terms of harm to society. Not even talking about old time unions (my opinion of mafia was lowered by their union associations) - someone I know is in the union right now, and despite being left wing and kinda captive audience they keep telling me about all the stuff the union does - work prevention, corruption, feather-bedding, bureaucracy and general waste. And while they don't care that much, I sometimes get the impression that the apathy is caused by helplessness - speaking out against the union won't achieve anything but will probably make it very hard for you to get jobs in the industry. I think in this way unions are literally worse than something like CPC/etc totalitarian govts, at least CPC's incentives can be aligned correctly some of the time. So, mandatory anti-union training is kinda like mandatory anti-patient-abuse training (for doctors), or e.g. anti-harassment training.
adultSwim 4y ago
I call on us tech workers to support our colleagues who are currently considered less important than we are.
- hn_version_0023 4y ago
  I call on US tech workers to shut down the internet in the US until we all have healthcare. It’s doable. Just need to find the will to act.
newaccount2021 4y ago
variant 4y ago
This issue always confuses me. Unions are neither always good nor always bad. Advocacy and discussion is part of the process. More power to Apple if it wants to attempt to convince its workers that forming a union will not be in their best interest. More power to the workers if they want to listen to voices on the other side. Carry on.

122 points by carlycue 4y ago

quux 4y ago

https://archive.ph/b1xw3 https://archive.ph/b1xw3

floor_ 4y ago

Big yikes. I hope Apple doesn't push undeleteable U2 songs to their Apple devices.

black_13 4y ago

faridelnasire 4y ago

What..? Yet another tech company who normally is pro any current social justice hashtag actually doesn't give a fuck about human dignity when push comes to shove? Wild...

readams 4y ago

Anything but immediate embracing of a union is called "union busting" apparently. The union presents its case why can't Apple?

Miner49er 4y ago
Apple allegedly broke labor law. If that's not union busting in your book, what is? Does it have to get to the point of Blair Mountain or something?
- readams 4y ago
  Apple allegedly broke some new definition of labor regulations that don't currently exist. The NRLB is trying to expand this to the point that there's literally no action you can do to respond to a union.
moate 4y ago
1- Yes, most of us on the pro-labor side consider any effort to dissuade people from joining a union "union busting" generally. They're trying to "bust" the union by stopping people from joining. This isn't misrepresentative semantics, this is saying they oppose the union by their actions. The literal definition of union busting is "the activity of reducing or destroying the power of a trade union or trade unions". So yes, literally anything other than immediately embracing a union by management is, by definition, "union busting". 2- The first paragraph of the article says that not only did Apple not immediately embrace the unionization of their labor force, but according to the filing, violated US Labor law. I can accept this weird pro-management twisting of the definition of "union busting" to exclude legal opposition, but I do not understand how anyone in good faith can say that illegal union opposition techniques don't fit a personal definition of "union busting". You can argue that the investigation may determine otherwise, but the title does say "alleges" to hedge that.
- randerp 4y ago
  not familiar with the details of organizing so there might be some naïvety here. are you saying it is a complete one way street? unions can not be opposed under any circumstances? if some employees meet to discuss the power of "individual agency" that is considered union busting? there can be no competing ideologies?
  - moate 4y ago
    There is a binary: Pro-union, anti-union. That's it. It's that simple. I'm not saying people aren't allowed to oppose unions, either ideologically or legally. If a jobsite is trying to organize, employees discussing "individual agency" is fine. But there are only 2 competing ideologies "union" or "no union". There are plenty of people who would accept the viewpoint that members of the labor unit cannot themselves engage in "union busting" because they aren't part of the management group (there would also be hardliners who feel that all people of all levels of the organization that undermine the union are attempting to union bust, myself among them, but I'm fine pointing out that there is another viewpoint) That said, any action that an employer takes to prevent unionization, legal or illegal, fun or boring, is engaging in "union busting". They have ways in which they are legally allowed to do this, but any attempt to describe anti-unionizations efforts taken by management as somehow not being "union busting" is disingenuous based on the definition of the term.

manuelabeledo 4y ago

> While the NLRB has previously held that companies can require employees to attend anti-union meetings, the agency’s current general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo views such “captive audience” sessions as inherently coercive and illegal, and her office is pursuing cases that could change that precedent. While it seems to be some advancement here, and the NLRB may make these meetings illegal, I wonder how we got to this point. It's an easy case to be made that anti-union meetings may be coercive. It's also completely illegal for company higher ups to organise, or for companies to meddle in labour organisation affairs, yet it is fine to push workers to not join unions?

moate 4y ago
>> I wonder how we got to this point. The glib answer is "Capitalism, neo-liberalism, and the lack political party that actually answers to/is beholden to the labor class". There's a lot of nuance in those 3 things, but if you study the history of labor struggles and policy in the US it's mostly that.
Spooky23 4y ago
Easy. Ronald Reagan. Alot of people felt that unions were way too strong going into the 70s and 80s. Particularly as the “new south” became an onshore outsourcing destination, policy flipped.
- moate 4y ago
  Don't you DARE let the Democrats, especially during Clinton era, off the hook. That was their turn away from unionism and towards the 3rd way the told everyone that they don't need union protection because in the new economy of the digital future everyone will have so many opportunities that the unions were a thing of the past and everyone will be so well educated they can't help but make a good living. https://www.lawcha.org/2016/11/23/bill-clinton-remade-democratic-party-abandoning-unions-working-class-whites/ https://www.lawcha.org/2016/11/23/bill-clinton-remade-democr...
  - Spooky23 4y ago

Spooky23 4y ago

CWA is usually an aggressive union. Not a good or bad thing, just a thing. In NYC, With a company like Apple, where you’ll get a press hit for reporting that Tim Cool peeled an orange at his desk, pushing stories like this is very effective. But of the day, it’s just noise.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

legitster 4y ago

I mean, yeah? It is not in a company's interest to be unionized. This shouldn't exactly be news. Even in this article, the organizers acknowledge that what Apple is doing isn't illegal, but argue that it should be. I get it. Organizing labor is tough. They're looking for some legal reprieve. But at the end of the day unions are fundamentally bad for employers. We can push for laws requiring them to roll out a welcome mat but we shouldn't expect them to like it.

moate 4y ago
You can't break laws in doing so. That's the news. "Apple is doing illegal things" is not the same as "It's not in Apple's interest to be unionized". We can and should expect the 4th estate to hold people accountable when they break laws in their pursuit of more profits for the investor/management classes. The fact that people are reading "Apple is doing illegal things in order to prevent unionization" and shrugging is indicative of the larger issue which is that anti-union sentiment has become so pervasive in the country it's essentially the default at this point. I feel that people should be mad that Apple opposes unions so much they're willing to commit crimes to prevent it, just like I feel that people should be mad if they found out that Apple was using iPhones to create a Batman like spy network. People should be mad when companies break laws and exploit them, not shrug and go "whelp, that's just them doing a Capitalism, hayuck!"
JaimeThompson 4y ago
>It is not in a company's interest to be unionized. Why not?
- tomelders 4y ago
  I think they mean it's not in the best interest of the people who "own" the company. Those people want to minimise costs as much as possible and Unions get in the way of them doing whatever the hell they want.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Unions increase labor costs.

jmyeet 4y ago

Just a friendly reminder that every charitable donation or cause that a company--any company--supports is marketing. A less charitable interpretation is "virtue signaling". Companies will pay millions to union-busting law firms because labor organization is really the only thing that will improve the material conditions of their workers. To anyone at Starbuck's, Amazon, Apple or really any other company, this should be all the evidence you need that you should join a union because it's the one thing your employer will spend millions to avoid happening. Ultimately, your relationship with your employer is adversarial. Don't forget that.

ksec 4y ago
>A less charitable interpretation is "virtue signaling". It wasn't like that before. Especially for Apple. It used to be borderline Marketing. If you could call it that. But Apple never did any of that. Steve doesn't even want his donation to be known. Somehow Apple went from one end of the Spectrum to the leader in "virtue signaling".
Vanderson 4y ago
Privately owned companies have the direct responsibility to care for their employee's and view their employee's as necessary partners to the company's success helps avoid _some_ of what you are describing. This is reliant on decent ownership of course.
- becquerel 4y ago
  Unfortunately, even private companies have an ultimate obligation to maximize profit (or else they're overtaken by another business which will). This means that employers and employees ultimately remain opposed.
  - Vanderson 4y ago
    Nothing is in a vacuum, and employees (myself included) feel the opposite responsibility. I want a paycheck and to get that I need my employer to stay in business. There is a synergy there. Maybe this is a scale issue. As a single owner of a business I feel personally responsible, and my actions in business are the same as in my personal life. But with a business I share ownership with, I have less personal responsibility, therefore by default I am simply not responsible (and feel less so) about the effects the business has. Multiply this out to thousands of shareholders, where this connection of ownership -> responsibility towards employees dilutes to the point of non-existence.

ralmidani 4y ago

> requiring employees to attend mandatory anti-union speeches And you’ll see why 1984 won’t be like “1984.”

ughitsaaron 4y ago
I’m obsessed with that ad. It’s such a fascinating cultural artifact. It’d be interesting to explore how it compares with early Ford advertisements for the Model-T (which also made a lot of claims about the freedom and independence it offered consumers).
sershe 4y ago
How is this different from mandatory training we all have to do on customer data privacy, compliance, diversity and inclusion, etc.? It's work time. You get paid to do it. I think unions are some of the most evil, corrupt, harmful institutions to have ever existed. On par with drug cartels and such in terms of harm to society. Not even talking about old time unions (my opinion of mafia was lowered by their union associations) - someone I know is in the union right now, and despite being left wing and kinda captive audience they keep telling me about all the stuff the union does - work prevention, corruption, feather-bedding, bureaucracy and general waste. And while they don't care that much, I sometimes get the impression that the apathy is caused by helplessness - speaking out against the union won't achieve anything but will probably make it very hard for you to get jobs in the industry. I think in this way unions are literally worse than something like CPC/etc totalitarian govts, at least CPC's incentives can be aligned correctly some of the time. So, mandatory anti-union training is kinda like mandatory anti-patient-abuse training (for doctors), or e.g. anti-harassment training.

adultSwim 4y ago

I call on us tech workers to support our colleagues who are currently considered less important than we are.

hn_version_0023 4y ago
I call on US tech workers to shut down the internet in the US until we all have healthcare. It’s doable. Just need to find the will to act.

newaccount2021 4y ago

variant 4y ago

This issue always confuses me. Unions are neither always good nor always bad. Advocacy and discussion is part of the process. More power to Apple if it wants to attempt to convince its workers that forming a union will not be in their best interest. More power to the workers if they want to listen to voices on the other side. Carry on.