A business that brands itself as “progressive” is still just a business, primarily concerned with profit-making, no matter how much play the commentariat gets out of arguing over “woke capital” or whatever the terminology of the moment may be. If you don’t believe it, just look at how such companies respond when their workers unionize.

The latest case is REI, an outdoor equipment and apparel retailer with 168 stores employing fifteen thousand people across the United States. On January 21, workers at one of those stores, in Manhattan, filed for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The bargaining unit comprises 116 employees, and is organizing with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, known of late for its campaign at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama.

As Graham Gale, a worker involved in the union effort, said in a statement on the effort, unionization is a response to “a tangible shift in the culture at work that doesn’t seem to align with the values that brought most of us here.”