Background
A unionization movement among Apple Store workers has seen the Cupertino company accused of a variety of illegal union-busting measures. These range from mandatory attendance at anti-union meetings through creating a fake union and penalizing union members to firing union activists.
The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has already upheld claims of two illegal Apple union-busting tactics, and two members of Congress said last month that there appears to be a recurring pattern of the Cupertino company breaking labor laws.
One concern raised by the lawmakers was that Apple was illegally “interrogating” staff, and this has now been confirmed. The latest ruling relates to the World Trade Center store, where charges were first filed more than a year ago.
Apple union-busting includes coercive interrogations
Bloomberg reports that a judge yesterday ruled that the iPhone maker was indeed guilty of breaking the law by doing just that.
Apple Inc “coercively interrogated” retail employees about their pro-union sympathies and restricted the circulation of union flyers, a US labor board judge ruled, marking a victory for labor organizers at the world’s most valuable company.
In a Tuesday decision, a National Labor Relations Board judge wrote that Apple violated the rights of employees at its World Trade Center store in New York City, one of several around the country where workers waged union campaigns last year.
The judge ordered Apple to immediately cease and desist from this. The company was also told that it cannot continue to remove pro-union literature from employee break rooms.
Apple had not commented on the ruling at the time of writing.
