REI and its workers unionization efforts

[SamSpade]

Informative big picture article from public broadcasting:
https://www.opb.org/article/2023/07/06/ ... n-efforts/

[Alpha8472]

REI seemed like a good company to work for. Then the union came along, and the company started cutting work hours. It seems like the union push backfired, and it shows how weak the union is.

[storewanderer]

Given these REIs are being represented by an arm of UFCW, there are already a lot of blueprints out there on contracts to apply to these stores and more importantly, though not even mentioned in the article, the employees will be able to start paying into UFCW's employee benefit funds for healthcare, pension, etc.

I find it curious the article does not really mention the benefit thing. The article just has vague stuff about hours, working conditions, etc. Guaranteed minimum hours is a great concept for a stable union shop like a grocery store, but a business like REI has some real ebbs and flows of traffic throughout the year. So with REI, what happens when sales fall is there is not enough revenue so they cut hours. Same thing most general merchandise retailers do. If they get pushed by a union to guarantee minimum hours, they will just have to lay people off and give the guaranteed minimum hours to the few employees left. Then the stores won't be so overstaffed anymore when they get busy again (since the employee pool shrunk since they couldn't give the guaranteed minimum hours during slow season to as many people as they hired during the busier seasons) either making the job harder for the few employees who remain... I am not sure these employees understand what a union can and can't do for them. Hopefully they at least get a seniority thing in there to require layoffs be done to less senior employees first. A union can't suddenly force revenue to their stores to give them hours and can't make their job easier. And REI employees have it VERY easy relative to other retailers and are paid WAY more already. Their stores have short hours and are extremely overstaffed. REI isn't even open on Black Friday... These REI employees should go work a few shifts at Dick's or Big 5, they'd shut up about work conditions, pay, culture, and benefits very fast.

It is really bad that REI took back the pay increases given to the unionized store but these employees have to understand that in a union shop, all pay needs to be agreed to between the union and the employer. If a "temporary agreement" that gave pay raises is ended, which the employees CHOSE to end so they'd have the right to strike, then the pay raises go away. That is how it works in a union shop. They should have thought of that before voting in the union and again before voting against keeping the temporary agreement.

I have found quite a few pretty lazy, snotty, and entitled employees at REI as cashiers. The best employees are in departments/out on the floor and are wonderful and engaged. So I am not too surprised that some of their employees have unrealistic demands and zero understanding of how their business works.

Much of what REI sells can be obtained online at much lower prices and with better assortment online. These employees may want to keep that in mind too. This is a retailer where customers have often agreed to pay more as they felt good about supporting REI. These employees throwing mud at the company about labor practices (very unfairly given how REI's competitors treat their employees and pay their employees...) is not going to help REI's image or customer's feeling good about paying more at REI.

[veteran+]

Informative big picture article from public broadcasting:
https://www.opb.org/article/2023/07/06/ ... n-efforts/

The more Unions the better!

I would trust a lousy Union more than I would trust any corporate entity.

These putative "good companies" show their true nature when a Union comes knocking.

[buckguy]

Given these REIs are being represented by an arm of UFCW, there are already a lot of blueprints out there on contracts to apply to these stores and more importantly, though not even mentioned in the article, the employees will be able to start paying into UFCW's employee benefit funds for healthcare, pension, etc.

I find it curious the article does not really mention the benefit thing. The article just has vague stuff about hours, working conditions, etc. Guaranteed minimum hours is a great concept for a stable union shop like a grocery store, but a business like REI has some real ebbs and flows of traffic throughout the year. So with REI, what happens when sales fall is there is not enough revenue so they cut hours. Same thing most general merchandise retailers do. If they get pushed by a union to guarantee minimum hours, they will just have to lay people off and give the guaranteed minimum hours to the few employees left. Then the stores won't be so overstaffed anymore when they get busy again (since the employee pool shrunk since they couldn't give the guaranteed minimum hours during slow season to as many people as they hired during the busier seasons) either making the job harder for the few employees who remain... I am not sure these employees understand what a union can and can't do for them. Hopefully they at least get a seniority thing in there to require layoffs be done to less senior employees first. A union can't suddenly force revenue to their stores to give them hours and can't make their job easier. And REI employees have it VERY easy relative to other retailers and are paid WAY more already. Their stores have short hours and are extremely overstaffed. REI isn't even open on Black Friday... These REI employees should go work a few shifts at Dick's or Big 5, they'd shut up about work conditions, pay, culture, and benefits very fast.

It is really bad that REI took back the pay increases given to the unionized store but these employees have to understand that in a union shop, all pay needs to be agreed to between the union and the employer. If a "temporary agreement" that gave pay raises is ended, which the employees CHOSE to end so they'd have the right to strike, then the pay raises go away. That is how it works in a union shop. They should have thought of that before voting in the union and again before voting against keeping the temporary agreement.

I have found quite a few pretty lazy, snotty, and entitled employees at REI as cashiers. The best employees are in departments/out on the floor and are wonderful and engaged. So I am not too surprised that some of their employees have unrealistic demands and zero understanding of how their business works.

Much of what REI sells can be obtained online at much lower prices and with better assortment online. These employees may want to keep that in mind too. This is a retailer where customers have often agreed to pay more as they felt good about supporting REI. These employees throwing mud at the company about labor practices (very unfairly given how REI's competitors treat their employees and pay their employees...) is not going to help REI's image or customer's feeling good about paying more at REI.

Benefits are conditioned on working a certain number of hours so guaranteed minimum hours are a strategic demand.

Most of what they sell is normally full price elsewhere, too, so what they offer is service and the benefits of membership. Their main competition is probably the fuller line operations of the brands they sell like TheNorthFace, Patagonia, etc. and stores with a similar pricing model like Backcountry. They've managed to outlast comeptitiors like Eastern Mountain and their suppliers made life difficult for Moosejaw after it was bought by Walmart. The level of service, the co-op structure rather than normal retail model, environmental philanthropy, etc. are part of their appeal, so an ugly strike would not be good for them, in the long run. To an even greater degree than Starbucks, they've cultivated a particular image that a significant part of their customer base would expect them to do do more than just aspire.

I've been an REI member since I was in college and, from experience, they mainatain a fairly stable degree of store traffic throughout the year, outside of periodic sales and they're less dependent on holidays like Easter and Christmas than a department store. I've been in at least a half dozen of their stores in recent months including two that were unionized, although I only was aware that one of them was until I saw the article. I've rarely run into problems with service---in fact, the only really memorable times was because of store management and the store manager. Long story,short--long-term knowledgable people were terminated and the newbies were not well supervised whioch meant that they weren't scanning in items available for delivery, among other things and even teh manager was reluctant (not once but twice) to "look in the back". Fortunately, the bigger flasgship in DC isn't too far from where I live and has much better service so I just go there instead. You're entitled to your opinion by I'm guessing that teh mean REI cashiers, like teh empty Walmarts and the CVS's with no one shopping/staffing the front end exist more in your imagination than in reality.

[storewanderer]

Benefits are conditioned on working a certain number of hours so guaranteed minimum hours are a strategic demand.

Most of what they sell is normally full price elsewhere, too, so what they offer is service and the benefits of membership. Their main competition is probably the fuller line operations of the brands they sell like TheNorthFace, Patagonia, etc. and stores with a similar pricing model like Backcountry. They've managed to outlast comeptitiors like Eastern Mountain and their suppliers made life difficult for Moosejaw after it was bought by Walmart. The level of service, the co-op structure rather than normal retail model, environmental philanthropy, etc. are part of their appeal, so an ugly strike would not be good for them, in the long run. To an even greater degree than Starbucks, they've cultivated a particular image that a significant part of their customer base would expect them to do do more than just aspire.

I've been an REI member since I was in college and, from experience, they mainatain a fairly stable degree of store traffic throughout the year, outside of periodic sales and they're less dependent on holidays like Easter and Christmas than a department store. I've been in at least a half dozen of their stores in recent months including two that were unionized, although I only was aware that one of them was until I saw the article. I've rarely run into problems with service---in fact, the only really memorable times was because of store management and the store manager. Long story,short--long-term knowledgable people were terminated and the newbies were not well supervised whioch meant that they weren't scanning in items available for delivery, among other things and even teh manager was reluctant (not once but twice) to "look in the back". Fortunately, the bigger flasgship in DC isn't too far from where I live and has much better service so I just go there instead. You're entitled to your opinion by I'm guessing that teh mean REI cashiers, like teh empty Walmarts and the CVS's with no one shopping/staffing the front end exist more in your imagination than in reality.

REI provides health insurance and other benefits to part time employees who work a minimum of 20 hours AVERAGE per week over a 12 month period. They do not need 20 hours EVERY week to keep benefits. It is on an average over 12 months basis. This fits the needs of the business due to how the business varies during the year. Some locations have different busy periods than others also.

Again the traffic level of REI depends on the time of year. And it also depends on the individual store location and what people are doing in that area and when they do it. In Reno they get a heavier amount of business in the later part of the year due to the ski traffic in the area but it depends when the ski resorts actually open (in a lucky year they open in October; in a bad year they may barely be open by Christmas). Many REI Stores elsewhere would have little to no traffic impact from ski season. In the Spring there is a traffic increase due to additional activity at Lake Tahoe (hiking, biking, camping) which is probably fairly standard chainwide, but then unique to Reno in the August period there is a large large large traffic increase due to the Burning Man event that occurs in late August. Conversely months like September, October, February, March, may be very slow depending on what is happening with the ski season.

You can go read the Google Reviews about the REI in my area and you will see multiple reviews commenting negatively (also many commenting positively) on the employees. The reviews may not specifically be targeting the cashiers as I called out, but read the reviews and you will see that negative employee experiences are the only negative thing anyone is saying about the store, and that is getting that store a marginal 4.3/5 rating on Google while the local Scheels has a 4.6/5 rating on Google.

As far as CVS goes I've done 4 transactions with 4 different CVS units in the past 2 weeks and at 3 of those 4 locations nobody was at the front end when I paid. In one of the locations, pharmacy was already closed since it closes at like 7 PM on weeknights, and I didn't see an employee the entire time I was in the store. I have no clue where they were.

Further you should be aware CVS has upgraded its employee inventory guns (Ironmans) they work on the floor with so they can remotely monitor self checkout (including camera), remotely approve bagging errors, remotely approve ID checks, etc. from anywhere in the store. Do you understand that the corporate office actually implementing this technology is enabling the employees to not be on the front end physically? The corporate office is fully aware that it does not staff the stores in a way that allows for the front ends to be staffed in these medium-lower volume stores, and even designed a system to enable the front ends to be unattended.

[BillyGr]

Further you should be aware CVS has upgraded its employee inventory guns (Ironmans) they work on the floor with so they can remotely monitor self-checkout (including camera), remotely approve bagging errors, remotely approve ID checks, etc. from anywhere in the store. Do you understand that the corporate office actually implementing this technology is enabling the employees to not be on the front end physically? The corporate office is fully aware that it does not staff the stores in a way that allows for the front ends to be staffed in these medium-lower volume stores, and even designed a system to enable the front ends to be unattended.

Also makes sense to be able to do those things remotely, since they could be ringing up one customer at a regular register and that way they don't have to interrupt that to walk around to the self-checkout to fix whatever has happened there