REI Wants You to Know They Are Busting a Union on Indigenous Land
REI is fighting a union drive at a New York store. Toward that end, the company published a podcast, offering a master class in progressive justifications for anti-unionism.
REI has now published a podcast, which opens with an indigenous land acknowledgment, to try to dissuade workers from organizing. (Robert Alexander / Getty Images)
REI is revolutionizing the union-busting space.
There’s nothing special about a company launching an anti-union website to combat an organizing drive among its workers — bosses do it all the time. But there is something unique on the site REI launched in response to a unionization effort at its SoHo location in Manhattan, where on January 21, workers organizing with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) filed for an election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). At the bottom of the page, there is a podcast.
“Podcast with Eric & Wilma” is a twenty-five-minute conversation between Eric Artz, the outdoor equipment and apparel retailer’s CEO, and Wilma Wallace, its chief diversity and social impact officer. In keeping with the company’s progressive image, the recording opens as follows:
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