CWA/Apple Retail Bargaining Report #4 Penn Square Location, Oklahoma City, OK

Today the CWA Bargaining team continued negotiations with the Apple Bargaining team in Oklahoma City, OK.

We began the morning by receiving counter proposals from the Company on classification of employees & nondiscrimination. The sad part was these counter proposals completely gutted the original proposals that were passed by the Union and refer directly to their current policies.

The Union passed a counter proposal on Union Activities that would give us the ability to manage our bulletin board in the store with strictly Union business and if there was something posted that Apple did not agree with, they would have the ability to discuss it with the Local Union. There was a long discussion on how they wanted the proposal to give them the ability to pull something off the board if they deemed it violated Company policy. There was a long conversation on the purpose of the board and it would have nothing to do with Apple’s policies as again it was for official Union business. At the end of the day, they did mention we were close on the proposal. However, there was no agreement at the close of today's session.

Apple Management gave a PowerPoint presentation on how they believe having our seniority proposal would hurt their culture and diversity. This PowerPoint had no raw numbers, only percentages on data as little as a year and a half old. The Union will be doing a request for information specific to diversity and numbers in the store. The Union pointed out that this has been an issue for a long time based on the Company’s hiring patterns. Our position is seniority is a fair process for all employees and everyone would be on an equal playing field based on tenure with the Company.

The Union asked several questions around Apple’s discipline and review policies. There are no steps of progressive discipline and they have identified themselves currently as an at-will Employer which gives them the ability to terminate anyone at any time. The Union will be focused on looking at this specifically with an additional request for info and will use this info to work on a future proposal.

In closing, we haven’t received any real counter proposals from the Company of substance through four sessions of bargaining. We now have seven weeks before we meet again. The hope is we receive the additional data we request, formulate additional proposals, and they come to the next session with proposals we can find common ground on. We will meet again on July 25 & 26 in Oklahoma City. Thanks for continuing to mobilize and standing strong!

In Unity & Solidarity,

CWA/Apple Bargaining Team

Michael Forysythe, Genius Admin
Darren Griffis, Business Expert
Kirsten Matson, Technical Expert
Jay Albertson, President CWA 6016
Billy Moffett, CWA District 6 Staff Representative

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