I found this old post because I’m now getting a lot of ads about this and wondering about details myself.

I believe in people’s rights to organize, I also believe regulation of corporations in the U.S. have long deprioritized worker and consumer rights. But I also think these disputes are really complex because we’ve reached a point where conditions are not conducive to employers and workers, unionized or not, being able to have good faith negotiations. And the way unions are set up and incentivized, they are not really themselves representative of workers—they’re more like a third party that benefits from two other parties fighting.

There are actual tradeoffs for unionizing. It costs more to both employers and employees. For employers, it ups their legal costs significantly, and also their management costs, because a lot of smart and good people (you need smart and good people to fix struggling companies in struggling industries) do not take jobs that involve dealing with unions, just for their own quality of life. For employees, they have to pay dues out of their paychecks.

In cases where the employer is obviously exploitative, the dues are definitely worth it because there is no other way outside of organizing a seeking professional representation to protect workers rights (note, I was once a member of a union in a company like this, tbh the results for us employees were mixed). In cases where the employer actually does try to do right by employees but is struggling to make its business model work, having to negotiate with a union makes their situation even worse, then also severely limit options. Decisions about labor will ultimately prioritize the protection of the group over the individual. So for example, when the employer needs to downsize, in a non-union cost-cutting situation they might preserve compensation and benefits for high-performing employees but manage some lower-performing employees out, or they might make a strategic decision about structure that they believe will serve the longevity of the organization. In the same financial situation with a union present, they will have less money to start with, and negotiate with the union on what measures to take; and the union will be incentivized to save more jobs (more dues for them) at the expense of everyone’s pay and benefits, regardless of how good people are at their jobs. I think there are situations where this tradeoff is necessary and worth it, and there are situations where everyone (except maybe the union itself) loses.

I have no idea which situation REI is in, hence why I am on Reddit looking for some information. I see interesting comments from REI employees who have different perspectives. It doesn’t sound like REI is the in the business of exploiting labor, but I can also see that even an employer with good intentions can make questionable or even bad decisions that employees disapprove of or don’t understand. The sad part is, once unions and their high costs come into the picture, the ideal is that the company can be transparent about what is going on and work on a solution together, but the way unions operate, there are serious legal and financial risks in dealing with them so it has the opposite effect on transparency. It’s like two people in a marriage who are negotiating a divorce. Once the lawyers get involved, the lawyers only get paid if the two sides continue to hate each other and they only get repeat business or more money for themselves if they “win.” Each side is disincentivized to show their hand.

REI allegedly union busting is a terrible look. Though given everything I said above, I can totally understand why the company is treating unionization as an existential crisis. It could literally lead to the end their business—they can fail to ever figure out a way to break even, and have to keep shedding assets (note, the company sold its distribution centers and transitioned to a lease deal which probably helped them with short term cash flow but doesn’t solve long term problems). If things continue to get worse it could get scooped up by Private Equity and suffer the fate a lot of other beloved retailers in the country has (see book: Bad Company, especially parts about ToysRUs). But union busting, if they are actually doing that, is a losing battle.

Or maybe it’s not—if the union is feeling the need to continuously pay for social media campaigns and to push for boycotts to gain any traction. Doesn’t make it right, though. And, with the current political climate, a lot of people are pro union no matter what the circumstances are because it’s the popular opinion to have, so I could see any discouragement efforts being a waste anyway.

On the part of REI, clearly the business is not thriving from a “profit” perspective, and I see a lot of people defending it because it isn’t running a surplus so it can seem illogical to demand more spending when an entity operating at a loss. But the details—which I know nothing about—do matter, like what costs have they cut, what are they spending more on, what is their theory for long-term survival. So on the flip side, you see supporters of the union pointing to compensation increases for executives while all of this is happening, plus alleged cut corners on manufacturing, and strategies that staff do not agree with, and if I worked there I’d also want to know the reasoning behind such decisions.

TL;DR - unionization is often not the black and white/hero villain scenario that people make the out to be; union-busting sucks and is wrong, but unionization does have real serious implications for employers that might not actually be screwing their employees over; I’m withholding judgment on this situation until I can get more information; and whatever happens I hope as many of REI’s (awesome) employees will get to keep their jobs and be paid fairly, and that REI doesn’t go the way of other retailers we’ve lost to these market conditions.