Please email REI Regional Director Sean Sampson and demand that REI reverse its statement of position and allow REI Cleveland workers to vote without any further delay.

BACKGROUND INFO:

Late last week, REI, Inc. refused to reach a Stipulated Agreement with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) to move ahead with a union election at its store in Beachwood, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. The refusal means the election cannot proceed swiftly, and as such, the Cleveland office of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has set a hearing to begin on Friday, February 3, 2023. The hearing process can prove to be a lengthy distraction and delay, stifling workers' voices, something workers did not have to endure during the prior two REI, Inc. union elections.

The Union seeks to represent all non-supervisory employees at the store, a presumptively appropriate bargaining unit. But REI has put forth meritless assertions to delay the election. First, REI claims that sales leads are supervisors under the law and therefore cannot unionize; second, that workers in the shop section of the store do not share a community of interest with the store’s retail workers; and third, that certain workers are “casual” employees and shouldn’t vote.

RWDSU vehemently disagrees with REI’s objections. It is especially galling because, as the Company unnecessarily fights RWDSU in Ohio, it is currently bargaining contracts with workers holding these same classifications at the SoHo, New York and Berkley, California stores. REI’s hypocrisy is union-busting plain and simple and is a meek attempt to exclude more than half of the proposed bargaining unit to be eligible to vote.

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