CWA/Apple Retail Bargaining Report #6 Penn Square Location, Oklahoma City, OK

Union Family,

Today the CWA Bargaining team continued negotiations with the Apple Bargaining team in Oklahoma City, OK. This was day two of our two day session for the month of July.

The Company spent the whole morning session asking questions specifically around our scheduling, vacation, holiday, and excused days with pay (flex time). They claimed the fact finding questions were to assist the afternoon presentation on scheduling. However the reality was, they took several knocks at employees having seniority based language in any of the above mentioned proposals and claimed it would not work in their “culture”. They did not counter any of these proposals that were passed on the first two days back on May 16th & 17th (70 days ago).

In the afternoon, their scheduling specialist presented a PowerPoint presentation that focused on a trial they rolled out in non-bargained stores which in their words, would fix a lot of the scheduling issues that employees have. They again refused to use seniority for any part of this process claiming it wouldn’t work and even in one situation, used a so-called random number generator to determine who gets what days off. Our team then received a proposal at the end of the day that would change scheduling to this process without giving the Union any say so or respecting seniority in the store.

It was a very long, grueling day discussing this new scheduling process. However, our team has already begun to think about what info we can formally request through the bargaining process to assist with working on a counter proposal. The CWA Bargaining Team plans to meet next week and get this request to the Company quickly.

The Company is still planning on sunsetting the Special Sick Time Policy ending the up to five days of paid sick time on 8/1/23. The Union Chair attempted to informally negotiate a Memorandum of Agreement that would extend the sunset date to 12/31/23 and include language to reevaluate it every three months. The Company had no interest; their position is employees have other protected time off they can take. We still strongly believe this was a change in working conditions and should have effects bargaining which we did not get. We will discuss next steps with our legal counsel.

In closing, please plan to attend the Mobilization Event on Tuesday, August 22nd (Next Bargaining Date). We believe it’s time Apple hears from the workers that we are not interested in existing procedures and policies that don’t work. We’re not going anywhere till we get a fair and decent contract for Apple Retail Workers at Penn Square Mall.

Please stay tuned for details that will be out after next Tuesday.

In Unity & Solidarity,

CWA/Apple Bargaining Team

Michael Forsythe, Genius Admin
Darren Griffis, Business Expert
Kevin Herrera, Specialist
Kirsten Matson, Technical Expert
Jay Albertson, President CWA 6016
Billy Moffett, CWA District 6 Assistant to the Vice-President

BM/ss
opeiu#13