There’s little progressive outdoor retailer REI (Recreational Equipment, Inc.), and I agree politically, though we consider ourselves ardent conservationists.
Their 2017 joint newspaper ad with Patagonia declaring “President Trump Stole Your Land” was devoid of reality and exaggerated 45’s public lands policies at the time. No acre of public lands was sold or “privatized” under Trump’s four years in office. But the ad wasn’t challenged much, and the companies went their merry way.
Former REI CEO Sally Jewell served as the 51st Secretary of the Interior from 2013 to 2017. She also had a stint as a Mobil oil engineer. While not as progressive as current Secretary Deb Haaland, an original Green New Deal backer, Jewell did initiate a moratorium on coal exploration on federal lands in 2016 and helped lay the foundation for the radical transformation of the Interior Department today.
I find myself agreeing with REI two-fold: their #OptOutside campaign and, more recently, their stance on unionization.
A new Bloomberg report claims REI believes unionization is terrible for company vibes. Eight of its 181 stores nationwide have voted to form unions and accused the retail cooperative of not subscribing to its mission of “shared values, not share value.”
This report comes at the heels of unionized REI employees, in concert with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) and Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU), filing an Unfair Labor Practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The press release blames company changes for “mass layoffs, reduced hours, demotions, and other challenges for REI workers.”
Bloomberg reports an REI flier warned, “Union representation has proven to be in direct opposition to REI’s collaborative culture by limiting direct communication, inhibiting collaboration, favoring transactional employee experiences, creating adversarial workplaces, and slowing progress.”
The publication also wrote that the outdoor retailer is a “forward-thinking company” that recognizes unions' role and believes “in the right for any employee to consider union representation.”
REI, however, sent a statement to the publication cautioning against unions meddling in their business operations, noting, “However, we do not view union representation as the best path to improving work situations for REI employees. We are committed to creating an employee experience that is so compelling that the need for a union is not necessary.”
REI’s fears over unionization campaigns are warranted and not isolated. Big Labor cheerleaders in government and the media have also maligned companies like Starbucks and Amazon - whose own employees aren’t too keen about unionization campaigns - as mean-spirited “union busters.” But the workers themselves have spoken loud and clear.
Alabama Amazon workers have consistently opposed unionization. In December 2022, employees at Starbucks Amazon narrowly rejected unionization. As recently as May 2023, Amazon shareholders voted down collective bargaining proposals per their 2023 Annual Meeting of Shareholders & Proxy Statement.
President Joe Biden promised to be the “most pro-labor” president and demanded Congress pass the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act. The PRO Act, if passed, would abolish right-to-work legislation, make union membership conditional for employment, and institute an ABC test a la California Assembly Bill 5 that assumes a worker is a default employee and not an independent contractor.
Don’t take my word for it. A website called PassThePROAct.org from the The Worker Power Coalition writes, “The PRO Act would dramatically grow workers’ power on the job by expanding union membership, reforming decades-old labor laws, banning so-called “right to work” laws and ending employer intimidation or interference in union drives.”
The American Action Forum (AAF) has extensively covered the true cost of the PROAct–and it is not something for Big Labor advocates to brag about. If the bill passed, it would increase employment costs between $18 to $61 billion dollars and jeopardize $2.3 trillion of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP).
While the Treasury Department’s August 2023 union report lauds the “positive spillover effects” of unionization, the opposite is true. Right-to-work states, actually, have more positive spillover effects as they “boast 1.6% higher employment, 1.4% higher labor participation, and 0.34% lower disability receipts” per a 2021 Harvard University study.
I explained at the Independent Women’s Forum that RTW laws are “associated with lower childhood poverty rates and greater upward mobility”—with “children at the 25th percentile of the parental income distribution during childhood have a 1.7 percentage point higher probability of reaching the top income quintile during adulthood if they grew up in an RTW location.”
Following the landmark 2018 Janus decision, public sector unions can’t mandate dues on non-members because it violates their First Amendment rights. The Freedom Foundation reports four of the largest public sector unions have lost a whopping 733,745 members since June 2018.
An inconvenient truth: The unionized workforce is rapidly dwindling, making up 10.1% of the U.S. workforce. In comparison, the freelance workforce has grown to 45%—with 72 million individuals engaging in independent contracting full-time, part-time, or occasional.
Even if I disagree with their politics, companies like REI demonstrate they can offer better benefits and perks over third-party entities like unions. Let the actual free market–not conditions artificially boosting unions - reward and empower workers, employees or not.
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