Apple and unions
workers around the globe have been involved in organizing since the 1990s. Apple unions are made up of retail, corporate, and outsourced workers. Apple employees have joined trade unions and or formed works councils in Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States.
The majority of industrial labor disputes involving Apple occur indirectly through its suppliers and contractors, notably Foxconn plants in [|China], and, to a lesser extent, in Brazil and [|India].
In 2021, Apple Together, a solidarity union, sought to bring together the company's global worker organizations. In the 2020s, a surge in new organizing took place in Australia, United Kingdom and the United States.
Industrial composition
Apple was founded in 1976, and has become one of the most valuable corporations in the world, being valued over $1 trillion in 2018, and in 2020 becoming the first American company to be valued over $2 trillion. Since the 1980s, Apple, like other Silicon Valley companies, shifted assembly operations and other manufacturing services from the United States to countries with lower labor, overhead costs and flexible scaling. Apple directly employs 147,000 workers including 25,000 corporate employees in Apple Park and across Silicon Valley. The vast majority of its employees work at 500 retail Apple stores globally.Apple relies on a larger, outsourced workforce for manufacturing, particularly in China. As of 2021, Apple uses hardware components from 43 different countries. The majority of assembling is done by Taiwanese original design manufacturer firms Foxconn, Pegatron, Wistron and Compal Electronics in factories primarily located inside China, and to a lesser extent, Foxconn plants in Brazil, and India.
Australia
Apple Australia employs 4,000 employees. On October 18, 2022, 150 retail workers from one of Apple's three unions in Australia, represented by Retail and Fast Food Workers Union, went on strike over pay and benefits in Brisbane, Chermside, and Charlestown. Other unionized workers in Australia are represented by the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association and Australian Services Union.Brazil
In 2012, Foxconn opened a second Foxconn factory in Jundiaí, Brazil, the first plant to focus exclusively on assembling Apple products. The Brazilian Metalworkers Union affiliated to IndustriALL had previous experience organizing Foxconn workers at the first non-Apple plant that was established in 2007. After a 5-day strike in 2014 involving 3,700 workers, Foxconn made a collective agreement with the Metalworkers Union to match the salaries of the newer Apple contract workers with the better paid Foxconn workers of the non-Apple focused plant. A prior strike happened in February 2013 over similar demands.China
In China, Apple directly employs 10,000 workers across its retail and corporate divisions. In addition, one further million workers are contracted by Apple's suppliers to assemble Apple products, including Foxconn and Pegatron. The Foxconn Zhengzhou Technology Park alone employs 350,000 Chinese workers in Zhengzhou to exclusively work on the iPhone.Pegatron workers are not represented by any trade union, according to a 2015 China Labor Watch report.
Despite Foxconn being the largest 'unionized' company in the world, with 90% of the 1.4 million workforce registered; the Foxconn Federation of Labour Unions, more commonly known as the Foxconn Trade Union is by and large a company union dominated by management rather than workers.
Foxconn made global headlines in 2010, when over a dozen workers committed suicide in iPhone factories, due to strenuous working conditions. Apple responded by bringing in the Fair Labor Association, a US based NGO as an external auditor from 2012 to 2016. One of FLA's findings was that the Foxconn Trade Union failed to adequately represent workers. The Economic Policy Institute criticized the FLA report for giving Apple and Foxconn 'undue' credit, despite ongoing issues including forced overtime and the continued use of underage labor. Foxconn promised in 2013 with the help of FLA to prepare genuine representative elections through an anonymous voting process to elect up to 18,000 new union committees.
A 2017 Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour report criticized the limited worker participation inside the Foxconn Trade Union and the lack of awareness or involvement of workers in the first democratic union elections Foxconn held in early 2015.
France
Apple has 20 retail stores in France, 9 in Paris, as of 2023. Apple employees are represented by four trade-unions, CGT, Unsa, CFDT and Cidre-CFTC.Ahead of the iPhone 5 debut in 2012, employees in French Apple retail stores voted to go on strike after collective bargaining negotiations stalled. Solidaires, the main trade union involved represents 25% of the 1,000 French employees.
Germany
In 2011, Apple directly employed 50,000 workers worldwide; 30,000 of them in retail Apple stores. In February 2012, the first works council in the country was established in the Munich Apple retail store. In an interview with Manager Magazin, a ver.di union representative cited excessive overtime, high noise level and insufficient health measures as motivating factors for workers to form a works council, as well as the lack of any collective agreements. In December, retail workers at the Frankfurt Apple store elected a works council, the second one in Germany, making the establishment of a Germany wide General Works Council mandatory. A third works council was elected in the Jungfernstieg Apple store in Hamburg in early March 2013. In September 2013, a works council was formed in Augsburg.India
Apple expanded in India by manufacturing iPhones through its Wistron contract manufacturer, located near Bangalore.Foxconn, which was present in India since 2006, explored setting up iPhone production in India as early as 2010, but scrapped plans in favor of opening a new plant in Brazil. Apple expanded production in 2019 in Chennai through contract manufacturers Pegatron and Foxconn in the special economic zone located in Sriperumbudur.
On December 17, 2021, 250 women workers at the iPhone Foxconn plant were medically treated for food poisoning, with productions halted on December 18. Nearly 3,000 workers blocked the highway to the factory, leading to 167 workers being detained for 24 hours, including trade union officials from Centre of Indian Trade Unions.
Italy
Ahead of the iPhone 4S launch in 2011, workers in the Rome Apple retail store went on strike, featuring the slogan "Strike Different", a play on "Think Different". Strike demands included higher monthly bonus schemes of US$200, limiting employee surveillance and increasing staffing.In 2013, three Italian trade unions FILCAMS-CGIL, FISASCAT and UILTuCS signed the first collective agreement with Apple in Italy representing 1,300 workers across 14 Apple stores and improved working conditions compared to the existing national retail collective agreement.
Japan
On December 18, 2014, retail workers of Apple Japan announced a union affiliated with Tozen using the slogan "Work Different". Three of Japan's ten Apple stores are unionized with Tozen.Spain
Workers in six Apple stores in Spain are members of syndicalist unions. Five of the stores are affiliated with General Confederation of Labor, while the Passeig de Gràcia store in Barcelona is affiliated with Confederación Nacional del Trabajo.United Kingdom
In June 2022, after joining GMB Scotland, retail workers at the Buchanan Street Apple store, one of two Apple's Glasgow stores filed paperwork to unionize, the first in the United Kingdom to do so. In November, Apple voluntarily recognized the Glasgow Apple union. On February 8, 2023, Apple signed a collective agreement with the store, the first Apple store to do so in the United Kingdom.In July 2022, United Tech and Allied Workers Union, affiliated with the Communications Workers Union organized a day of action in two London Apple stores on Regent Street and Covent Garden. UTAW claims to have members working in Apple stores in Exeter, Manchester, Brighton, and Norwich. On December 12, 2022, White City, London Apple store workers unionized with UTAW.
United States
As of 2019, Apple directly employs 90,000 employees in the United States, including 25,000 corporate employees in Apple Park and across the west coast. In 1990 [|Employees for One Apple] was the first organized worker initiative, in protest of changes to employee profit sharing. In 2011 an unsuccessful unionization effort was launched by Cory Moll in the San Francisco retail store. In 2021 the #AppleToo initiative launched, publishing over 500 stories of worker experiences with harassment. One year later, #AppleToo evolved into Apple Together, a network of different Apple Unions.The vast majority of the 270 Apple retail stores are not unionized. Apple hired Littler Mendelson law firm, known for their "anti-union" stance, to represent Apple in 2022.
For the first time ever, in 2022, two stores unionized in Maryland and Oklahoma with the support of International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers and Communications Workers of America respectively. Workers at the Towson Mall store in Maryland approved the first collective agreement on August 6, 2024. Additional unionization efforts are underway in New York, Kentucky and Ohio. There were unsuccessful and or cancelled efforts in California, New Jersey, Georgia and Missouri.
Employees for One Apple
In January 1990, following an announcement to cut employee profit sharing, workers on an internal network bulletin board system who had previously organized around affirmative action, recycling, and smoking on campus, "literally swamped" the system in protest of the changes, resulting in management walking back the changes. One employee compiled a list of participants in the profit sharing revolt and wrote to each of them forming a small group that soon merged with another recently formed group: the "concerned employees' league."The initial group of 50 workers using the name "Employees for One Apple" met in May 1990 and sought a restoration of the company's former "corporate culture," more direct communications with executives, a flattened hierarchy including distinctions and perks between management and employees, more influence over company decisions, and an "institutionalized voice" for employees. Management agreed to the formation of an "Employee-Executive Forum" consisting of 15 randomly selected employees, allowed to meet quarterly with management to discuss their concerns.
In June 1991, the group, which had grown to 500 members, organized a rally outside of one of the Cupertino, California offices in protest of forthcoming mass layoff as part of the company's cost-cutting plan. Workers demanded executives take pay-cuts as part of the cutbacks. In the days following the rally, CEO John Sculley announced a 15 percent pay cut, along with other top executive pay cuts. The group said they were considering unionization, a stance in contrast with their original opposition to unions. In 1997, CEO Gil Amelio fired 4,100 workers with severance to cut costs. One fired worker said the company's biggest problem was mismanagement.