Why REI's Progressive Image Is a Sham
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- čas přidán 7. 07. 2022
- REI workers in California are unionizing. They’re the first REI store to file for a union election following @reiunionsoho’s victory. REI claims to be a progressive company but employees say it’s a facade. They’re understaffed, overworked & face racism from managers.
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I guess I wasn't paying attention when REI hired Urban Outfitters CFO Eric Artz as new CEO president
1:22 It's so good to see people who have the benefits advocating for those who don't.
All over the country, the abuses of part time classification to withhold benefits has been going on since *at least* the 1980s.
A corporation is abusing it's employees? What a surprise! 🙄
Solidarity, brothers and sisters. Solidarity!
Simply put REI has gotten too big! The cookie cutter stores have shuttered many local shops that did outdoors way better than they do.
If you mean stores like EMS, or even single stores, I think it's more complicated than that, but there is validity in what you are stating on REI's growth and targets for growth. I'm not sure all did a better job than REI though. That's hit and miss from my experience. Some shops used to have good, experienced staff, many of which migrated to REI as their places closed down, and EMS is a very good example of that. But there are other outdoor stoors where the staff did little more than point customers in a direction to find something on the shelves. REI clobbered stories like that.
You would think they could be an example and become a worker co-op too.
While this is ideal, and also practical (as a worker co-op), I get the strong impression the CEO and board of directors would fight any such notion tooth and nail.
Wait, a corporation is not progressive? I am shocked.
😂
Try explaining that to the youth. If it wasn’t for hypocrisy and irony. They’d have nothing at all.
Well, usually it's Republicans who think that corporate has gone woke everywhere instead of seeing it for what it really is: maintaining power structures through virtue signalling. Seeming progressive instead of actually being progressive (because that would mean dismantling those power structures in favor of the working people).
I mean, they blame almost any failure of a company on "wokeness". Most recently the SVB collapse.
As a young man I was taught actions speak louder than words. In the world of REI words speak louder than actions. Great place for a used car salesman but a terrible place for hard workers that keep their mouths shut and strive to turn out great work.
Now they are progressively leaving Portland.
Complicated issue, mostly due to heavy crime in the city. But your broad point is not without validity.
Workers of the World Unite!
That CEO is a little like Schultz and Bezos in that they basically say: "We love your identity, we'll say black lives matter, raise a rainbow flag, and talk about climate change, just don't try to unionize or raise our taxes." It's like an upper-class pseudo-progressivism that makes my blood boil and insults the intelligence of the workers.
Wow. That's awful to hear how poorly the company has been treating their Hispanic employees.
We know Hispanics hike but do they camp?
American corporate dystopia 💔🇺🇲🌲💔🇺🇲🌲💔🇺🇲🌲💔💔💔💔💔
Thank you, MPU crew.
To Eric Artz: Being woke is not the point of the REI workers' unionizing! 🤦
I never understand why workers and companies make it hard on employees to do anything other than make them more money. Like bro if we all see dollar signs and focus on that i don’t care what color you are. Bring in the money that’s the point
Poor babies. They're not getting their way.
Thanks for the info. I’ll be voicing my concern with management along with my intent to reconsider any future purchases.
the part time worker part was so true!!! being classified as part time but working full time with no benefits is an outrageous situation most people have experienced im sure. had it happen to me so many times.
Maybe you’re not getting paid more because your labor isn’t worth more…
I work there, and agree with you.
All companies are like this to some degree. I work at a CPA firm and we are understaffed and underpaid. It is all about profit margins. Something needs to change.
The only way to change is to fight for the end of capitalism
@@harleygordon4485 At least as a primary form of economic structure. It's destroying this country, without question.
The reason I go out of my way to shop at REI as a member is because it is a Co-op that gives me the ability to vote for the 14 member board. As an REI Co-op Member I would like to remind the Board and Management that Anti-Union activities are a clear violation of Federal Law. Private Sector Employees are protected by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) passed in 1935. Section 7 states, “Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection, and shall also have the right to refrain from any or all of such activities” If the REI Board and Management continue to support the company's Anti-Worker Rights, and Union Busting activities I will no longer support REI as a customer. I will also recommend by friends and family do the same.
Hell yeah!
I'm basically a social liberal. Live and let live. If it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg....etc. But I generally prefer my backpacking gear somewhere below MSRP if possible, my aisles devoid of virtue signaling placards, my base layers packaged with appropriate gender labels (which are useful for reasons anyone who has ever looked down can understand), and a buying experience that is more concerned with providing me with what I'll when I get where I'm going than it is with selling me a heaping dose of identity politics alongside my tent. I suspect many feel the same and have begun buying accordingly...which has become increasingly convenient and more affordable elsewhere these days.
Meanwhile, and in contrast, it's pretty hilarious watching REI HQ trying to sleep in the bed it has made for itself. It's beyond parody when Wallace opens their internal podcast by announcing her pronouns then her title: "I'm REI's Chief Diversity and Social Impact Officer" (while maintaining she's ACTUALLY REI's "General Counsel, Corp. Secretary, and Vice President" on LinkedIn!!) and then proceeds to inform the audience she's "speaking from the traditional lands of the Ohlone people" before launching into a social justice catch-phrase laden, but ultimately anti-union, Q&A designed to dissuade her disadvantaged workers from empowering themselves by unionizing. In other words, an executive, checking their privilege by announcing the "stolen lands" from which they are speaking, then proceeding to fight against her workers rights to bargain collectively all while couching it in social justice language is just......well.....irony being one life's great joys......it just makes it all too good!!
As ever, one fans an open fire or stokes the fervor of a mob at one's own peril...and it is as true today as it has ever been that an appeaser is one who feeds the crocodile in the hope it will eat them last. A capitalist company that goes out of its way to actively support and encourage what is ultimately a Marxist ethos within it's own employee base while imagining they would turn on their own benevolent masters last definitely seems to fit the category.
Well, REI Corp. is getting a lesson on feeding crocodiles.
Meanwhile REI employees are getting a lesson on Capitalism, collective bargaining, and the fallacy of exchanging one unresponsive & exploitative master for another.
And in the end.....sadly.....it'll be REI consumers (those who remain at least) who'll be asked to pay the actual price of all these shenanigans and bear the brunt of REI's rising cost of doing business. (What? You thought it would all come out of share values or executive compensation rather than item markup? Guess again......) And thus, without a change of course on multiple fronts, REI will go the way of the Dodo. Just another "captured" company (management and staff alike) that refused notice the market indicators of it's ideologically driven mistakes until it finds itself picking through the ashes.
how is it a co-op if the employees aren't able to vote out whoever isn't paying them what they believe they should earn? Isn't a co-op a democratic work place? Why would a union even be necessary in a worker co-op if the workers are the owners able to vote on their CEO?
Or is it because they are not an actual co-op?
Because REI is NOT a worker-owned coop. It's a consumer-owned coop.
@@karnubawax This is a VERY key point a lot of people don't understand. In fact, upper management has been heavily criticized for fostering the impression it is a worker co-op, or that a member co-op is one and the same, when it is not.
That was one of the wokest woke a zoid displays I've ever seen.
I’m so sorry to hear this about REI and so Many other large employers! Best of Luck from California✌️❣️🙏
working at the RIE in Berkly sounds like one of the nine circles of hell
Forget all these BS pronoun stuff
These workers need better paying jobs like $20 an hour with better health care coverage plus $1 every year raises
We used to score a lot of great traveling gear from REI with the _"Take a small expensive item, then return/exchange it for what you actually need"_ grift back in the day when I hopped trains etc.
IMO taking whatever and however from a corporation that takes even more from everyone else is fair game.
I know one thing they hire people who are knowledgeable in the areas of recreation that they advertise about.
No, not anymore. My local store layed off a very knowledgeable cis-gender white male and hired a REDI candidate with ZERO experience climbing, backpacking, camping or even day hikes😂
They're focused on checking boxes and paying the least they can.
Typical. I know family that swears by it.
You need to clarify in these videos against REI that either it is not a worker-owned co-op or it is not a sufficiently worker-owned or worker managed co-op. The reason is that worker owned cooperatives are better than unions and you are only holding us in our progress down if you let people get a bad taste in their mouth from the sound of the term. Please educate yourselves about worker owned cooperatives and make it clear to the viewer that you know what those are and that you understand the arguments for why they are better than unions.
Excellent post Steve!
All these pathetic woke employees is why REI is losing money. Stop coloring your hair and man up.
This video demonstrates the problem with REI.
A. The employees are idealistic and immature children, too woke to be employed anywhere else
B. Never work for a company where the CEO begins a meeting with a land acknowledgement and telling you his "pronouns".
The whole company is ridiculous and needs to go away. They remind me of Twitter before Elon Musk bought them.
UNIONIZE!! Workers of the world UNITE!
"People that got hired after me got paid more"
It's pretty typical to be paid more if you're hired later on. Not saying I agree with it it's just typical. While racism happens it seems unlikely. Unless caucasians who got hired at the same time as him got paid more for the same position but he didn't state that.
The name thing, as someone who has a horrible memory, that could just be the person genuinely forgetting who has to interact with several people a day. Could all be a racist but I'd have to learn more about the situation.
"If we didn't like the company we'd just leave"
Don't buy this either. Some people simply don't have the financial option to leave their job to risk finding another at the very least they're going from familiar to unfamiliar territory. Plus you have co-workers you care about that you don't want to "let down" (that's why companies love making it feel like a "family". Gives more reasons for you to stay and it doesn't cost anything). I think it'd be a good thing to bring up that a lot of employees don't have the freedom to vote by quitting it's why I'm pro-Universal Basic Income.
Good post. Agree on a UBI. Done correctly, its a big key to a better future for everyone.
From a lifelong IBEW guy - hang in there REÍ workers, and good luck! 😀
I would just Quit the job and get a better job somewhere else
Like, where exactly? And what if you love what you do, and really connect to the customers that come into your store?
This company sounds a lot like the grocery chain I worked for. Please look into Sprouts! Do a story on Sprouts Farmers Market. I was a dept manager there for close to a decade and I still have nightmares waking me up from the shit I put up w/working there. From store managers sweeping harassment under the rug or lying to employees about fair compensation to DAILY THREATS of losing our jobs due to performance standards not being met. Thank you for making this channel and shedding light on these beyond evil corporations. I wish everybody in this country was watching these videos! Thank you thank you thank you
😢"That doesn't seem fair, we want the make believe unicorn fantasy and if not it's like racism and stuff. Work is like hard and we need safe spaces. Um I like spend more time crying about perceived wrongs than working, I'm not worth minimum wage, but like we demand things even though we haven't built a company and have no ownership rights, because you know socialism and stuff"😅
Your response shows a childish and willful misunderstanding to protect your middle class lifestyle in your mind at all costs. How anyone can justify people working the same hours and getting different benefits in terms of "unicorn fantasy" is humorous and illogical. Also the fact that there are those being paid more than someone who's been there a decade when they have only been there a year shows that their puritan work image is bullshit. People like you who stand up for corporate manipulation and exploitation because "America and hard work" make more sense for sure 😂
Money trumps integrity. Your oppression is their profession.
I applied at REI once but I wasn't Christian enough. They gave my friend a welcome basket with Bible and cross stuff in it.
#KeepYourReligion2Yourself
#IStandWithUnions
Never happened
I work there for a year and a half and there's no way a person to make a living there.
Does anyone know the truth?
Yeah, knowledgeable staff with experience are less important to them than diversity and hiring PT workers w/o benefits
I think it is great standing up for the part timers! But a lot of this is victim mentality and how can I get even for someone possibly offending me! How about you just do your job and if you don’t like the work environment, complain! If complaints not satisfied leave and go somewhere you think is better😅
Where is better actually? And what if what if you love what you do, you feel as if YOU are REI, not some corporate capitalist, and you really connect to the customers that come into your store?
And do you really think none of these people complained to management before this vote?
Thank you for reminding me why I wouldn’t hire any of you. 👍🏼
Too bright and articulate?
@@tonigonzalez1926 😂 Completely delusional. Check back in with me in a couple years after our economic shift. Companies will only hire those of great value. Your generation has proven themselves a complete loss. Either you’re not talking to people outside your echo chambers. Or you’re not listening. Either are pretty common trates of your ilk. I truly wish you the best. Our country needs your generation to wake the fuck up. Please don’t let your generation go down as an example of how not to raise kids.
Enjoy not working there anymore. Good riddance. This is what happens when you focus on employees instead of customers. Businesses exist to satisfy needs of customers not employees. You have whined your way out of a job. Good for you.
False dillemma. There is no rule that says you have to focus on the employees, or the customers. It's one or the other. That's BS. It's such total horse crap, I'll even give you an example. This is from Herb Kelleher, founder and CEO or Southwest airlines:
“Your employees come first. And if you treat your employees right, guess what? Your customers come back, and that makes your shareholders happy. Start with employees and the rest follows from that.”
During his tenure Southwest was the highest rated, most profitable, most admired airline year over year. Even during times when other airlines were going bankrupt.
Kelleher retired, then passed away. Now, the last two years running, now CEO Bob Jordan, and chairman of the board Gary Kelly, they think shareholders come first, and have openly stated as much. Southwest is now a total mess, two years in a row rated the worst airline to fly on.
If you think happy employees do not treat customers better than I have no idea what kind of world you live in.
You are retail entry level workers. 7 bucks an hour max. You are doing basic unskilled labor. You aren’t going to make money doing that. If you don’t make enough money get some training and swing a hammer welder or commercial driver license. You people are worried about what people call you. You are weak. You will fail. Figure it out or be broke. Not our problem.
If you really think it's that easy to work at REI, come shadow me for a day. Let's see how you do.
Used to like REI,After seeing this,Ill never shop there again,Too many snow flakes