Apple will permanently close its Towson Town Center store in June, marking the shutdown of the first Apple retail location in the United States to successfully unionize.
The company cited “declining conditions” at Towson Town Center — including the departure of multiple major retailers, reduced foot traffic, and persistent public safety issues in the mall and surrounding areas. Reports of shoplifting, organized retail theft, assaults, robberies, and other crimes have plagued the location for years, contributing to an environment that has driven away shoppers and businesses.
In a statement, Apple said the safety of customers and employees remains its top priority. While employees at the other two closing stores (Apple Trumbull in Connecticut and Apple North County in California) are being offered transfers to nearby locations, Towson workers — represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) — must apply for open positions elsewhere under the terms of their collective bargaining agreement.
The union immediately condemned the move as retaliation. In a strongly worded statement, IAM called the closure “a cynical attempt to bust the union” and filed unfair labor practice charges with the National Labor Relations Board. The union claims Apple is discriminating against its members by denying them the same transfer rights offered to non-unionized stores.
MacDailyNews Take: Exactly as we predicted back in 2022 when the Towson store became the first in the country to unionize: businesses have options when faced with poor conditions, including simply closing up shop. An employer is free to close operations at any time — and that’s precisely what Apple is doing here.
The union immediately screams “union-busting,” of course. Spare us. This decision has everything to do with the crime-ridden disaster that local Maryland leadership has allowed Towson Town Center (and the surrounding area) to become. Shoplifting swarms, assaults, robberies, and general chaos aren’t fixed by union negotiations over pay or working conditions. They’re fixed by actual law enforcement and sane public policy — neither of which the union delivers.
Apple already offers its retail employees some of the best wages, benefits, and working conditions in the industry. The vast majority of Apple Store workers have wisely rejected unionization efforts because they know those advantages come from Apple, not from union dues. The Towson crew chose differently. Now the store is closing, employees are being given opportunities at safer, non-unionized locations, and the union is left complaining from the sidelines.
Businesses don’t abandon thriving malls because workers organized — they leave when soft-on-crime policies turn shopping centers into unsafe zones. Apple is doing exactly what any responsible company should: protecting its customers, its team members, and its brand.
The union can cry “retaliation” all it wants. The real issue is the failure of local leadership to maintain basic public safety.
As we wrote back in May 2022:
In a free market, jobs are valued by supply and demand.
The skillset for a retail employee is different than that for, say, a software engineer. Potential retail employees are an order of magnitude more plentiful than software engineers and the wages paid and benefits granted for each job reflect that discrepancy.
You’re not going to get rich working in retail. There are simply too many other people capable of doing your job.
Nobody likes to hear that their job is a dime a dozen. Regardless, retail jobs are a dime a dozen.
If retail workers unionize, they can, and do, force abnormal wages and benefits that do not reflect the reality of supply and demand for such positions.
What happens next (besides backroom graft and corruption between union bosses and politicians)?
The corporation is forced to overpay unionized staff to do tasks that, in a free and unfettered market, should cost the company far less. Therefore, to maintain margins and profitability (in order to satisfy the company’s shareholders and the market), the company is forced to either cut back in other areas or raise prices for goods and services. The company cannot “absorb the cost” longer term.
Talk about inflation.
That said, yes, executive compensation is out of whack. Tim Cook is vastly overpaid for what he does. This is because he holds a rare skillset and it benefits the shareholders to have continuity in the CEO position. Basically, Apple overpays Tim Cook in order to have a long-term CEO which provides confidence to the market. A succession of different CEOs jumping from company to company every other year seeking higher salaries would be a negative and justifies Cook’s overpayment. Cook is paid to stay more than for what he actually does. This is why he has vesting targets set years into the future. If he stays, providing continuity, he benefits and so does the company’s stock price (over time).
Not so for retail employees. If one leaves, there’s an endless line of others to replace them. Sure, there are excellent retail employees and, if Apple’s retail arm is functioning properly, they are being identified and rewarded in order to keep them, as their continued employment benefits the company, the company’s customers, and the company’s shareholders. But the cost of their employment must make financial sense, regardless of how good an employee is – if it costs more to keep them than they are worth to the company, they should seek employment elsewhere, not force overpayment / continued employment.
If Apple is not functioning properly, unionization is the last resort of employees. Just know that those costs will eventually be passed to the customer. Someone has to pay. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. If those unionization costs are too high (which they tend to become over time), it will hurt the company (consumers will look for similar goods and services offered at significantly lower prices) and the retail workers will eventually feel negative effects from that (see: unions and Detroit’s automotive industry, what’s left of it).
Back in the day, unions corrected many wrongs: unsafe working conditions, forced overtime without pay, child labor, etc. None of these situations are faced by Apple Retail employees today. Some retail staffers simply want higher pay than the actual value of their work in a free market, so they want to band together to force it.
In many union settings, workers face limited advancement based on their merits. Union workers’ avenues for advancement are limited as stipulated by union contracts. So, if you are an exemplary Apple employee today, your prospects are likely brighter than if you were part of a union, subject to certain union rules governing advancement, etc. Retail employees should carefully consider the pitfalls of unionization and the consequences of unintended consequences.
Apple should do all it can, within reason, to satisfy and compensate retail employees. In fact, Apple appears to be doing so. [In February 2022], Bloomberg News reported that Apple will significantly increase wages and benefits for American retail workers amid a tightening labor market.
Apple adopted the following changes for U.S. retail workers beginning on April 4, 2022:
• Raises ranging from 2% to 10% depending on store location and role, for salespeople, Genius Bar technical support staff, and some senior hourly workers.
• Doubling paid sick days for both full-time and part-time workers. The days can be used for mental health leave and taking family members to the doctor. This change will give full-time workers 12 paid sick days, instead of six.
• Workers receive more annual vacation days, beginning at three years of employment instead of five.
• Part-time employees will now get as many as six paid vacation days for the first time. Another first: They’ll get paid parental leave. That benefit will cover up to six weeks and will include the ability to gradually ramp up work time for the first four weeks back.
• Part-time workers also will get access to discounted emergency backup care for children or elderly family members.
In a [2022] statement to Bloomberg News, an Apple spokesperson reiterated, “We are pleased to offer very strong compensation and benefits for full time and part time employees, including health care, tuition reimbursement, new parental leave, paid family leave, annual stock grants and many other benefits.” – MacDailyNews, February 18, 2022
Please help support MacDailyNews — and enjoy subscriber-only articles, comments, chat, and more — by subscribing to our Substack: macdailynews.substack.com. Thank you!
Support MacDailyNews at no extra cost to you by using this link to shop at Amazon.
Unions once held an important role in business. But in today’s world where choice is in insane levels, and you can be your own agent, unions only serve as remains of Mafia-like leeches. Public Unions should be abolished.
So your answer would be to let the executives have infinite power to stuff their own pockets and keep offshoring jobs as fast as they can, while no organization attempts to defend the needs of our local workforces?
Unions aren’t perfect but if you want to see mafia operations, it’s the C-suite dude.
Nuff.
F all these unions. These days all they do is evil and destroy everything they touch; look at the teacher’s unions, all pure evil.
They are all evil pieces of crap, do no work, and are just infiltrating cancer on an organization.
Meh. I used to frequent this mall; Apple is not wrong — the neighborhood is dying, the mall is revolting, and most of the anchors are leaving. Maybe they have a second motive, but their first one is spot on anyway.