Apple retail store workers employed at the Cumberland Mall location in Atlanta, Georgia announced yesterday that it has filed for a union election, Bloomberg Law reports.
The group filed the petition with the National Labor Relations Board on Wednesday after obtaining signed union authorization cards from eligible employees which, as The Verge notes, includes salespeople, technicians, creatives, and operations specialists. According to Bloomberg Law, more than 70 percent of the eligible workers signed the authorization cards — over 40 percent more than the 30 percent minimum required.
If more than 50% of the eligible workers vote to unionize, it will mark the first Apple retail store in the United States to unionize, with 107 employees available in the unit, as the petition states. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) must now formally review the petition.
While no election date has been set, the union proposed in the petition to hold one on-site on May 5-7.
“Right now, I think, is the right time because we simply see momentum swinging the way of workers,” Derrick Bowles, an employee of the Apple Store in Cumberland mall and member of the organizing committee, told Bloomberg Law. “As we sat back and re-evaluated, what we realized is that we love being at Apple—and leaving Apple, that’s not something any of us wants to do. But improving it is something we wanted to do.”
However, the Apple Store Cumberland Mall location is not the tech giant's first retail store trying to unionize. Last week, Apple Store workers from the Grand Central Terminal location began collecting signatures to form a union.
Yet, the news comes as part of a larger movement for retail employees pushing for unionization at big tech companies. Most notably, a group of workers from the Staten Island Amazon warehouse voted earlier this month to unionize as part of the Amazon Labor Union. In March, employees at BDS Connected Solutions, a Kansas City-based staffing agency and subcontractor for Google Fiber voted to unionize.
Microsoft, while it has no union currently, announced in January that it was acquiring Activision-Blizzard, a company who is currently trying to unionize before the deal is expected to close in 2023. Microsoft said it "will not stand in the way" should a union be recognized.
Apple did not immediately respond to IGN's request for comment.
Taylor is the Associate Tech Editor at IGN. You can follow her on Twitter @TayNixster.
