Over 70,000 REI Co-op members have pledged to boycott the outdoors retailer’s anniversary sale, which runs today through May 25, in a show of solidarity with workers at 11 unionized stores across the country, including one in Maple Grove.

REI Union members voted in March to authorize a boycott of the co-op’s largest event of the year and immediately began appealing to shoppers for support. (Take the boycott pledge.)

Workers say the boycott is a response to REI’s decision in February to declare bargaining at an impasse and implement the economic terms of its last, best and final offer, which over 98% of union members voted down in January.

The imposed terms cut benefits, starting wages and raises for many union members. The REI Union’s bargaining team, which brings together members of the Retail, Wholesale and Depart-ment Store Union (RWDSU) and six United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) locals, have called the move union-busting – and illegal.

Jacob Lish, a sales specialist at the Maple Grove store who represents UFCW Local 663 on the nationwide bargaining team, noted that REI implemented only the punitive economic terms of its final offer, not tentative agreements reached earlier in talks that introduced new rights for union workers.

“It’s really important for us that REI hears that its members don’t support the union-busting they’ve been trying to do this whole time,” Lish said.

Union members are hoping the anniversary-event boycott delivers just that message.

In addition to co-opmembers who have taken the boycott pledge, the nation’s largest labor federation, the AFL-CIO, has endorsed the boycott, adding REI to its “do-not-buy” list.

“Their bottom (line) is what they care about at the bargaining table,” Lish said “Even our most modest asks are too expensive; they tell us they can’t afford it.

“So by asking members to withhold their money for those 15 days, we think, is really going to impact REI – and hopefully drive them back to the table to reach an agreement with us.”

Union negotiators say they were “within inches” of a tentative agreement with REI before talks broke down. Management, they say, refused to guarantee union members wages on the same level as their non-union peers – a poison pill designed to thwart future organizing.

More recently, REI has demanded union members accept non-disparagement language in their contracts that would prohibit speaking out publicly against the company.

“REI has refused to offer us a fair contract, despite our willingness to compromise, and instead has insisted on provisions that would prevent more workers from joining the REI Union and that would ban us from speaking out,” Alex Pollitt, a worker at the REI in Bellingham, Wash., said in a statement. “Their anti-union stance is deeply incompatible with the values REI claims to profess.”

In June 2023, REI workers in Maple Grove voted 22-4 in favor of joining UFCW Local 663. After the vote, workers said they looked forward to winning a contract that addressed the rising cost of living, ensured consistent and adequate hours and improved staffing in their store.

Maple Grove was the seventh REI location to unionize. Organizing has continued, with workers at a twelfth store, in San Diego, scheduled to vote in a union election May 27-28.

Despite its reputation as a progressive-friendly retailer, REI has dug deep into the union-avoidance playbook since workers in New York unionized the first store in March 2022.

But the approach has not gone unnoticed by the co-op’s members.

When the REI union campaigned last year to elect two labor-friendly environmental leaders to the co-op’s board of directors, REI refused to put either on the ballot. The union then encouraged members to vote “no” on the co-op executives’ hand-picked candidates, who were running unopposed in the board election.

It worked, as over 115,000 members responded to the union’s appeal.

Two months later, REI agreed to establish a national bargaining structure with the union to settle contracts at its unionized stores – and to provide wage increases and bonuses that it had withheld from workers for the previous three years.

Now, REI members are being asked to deliver a similar message to executives by boycotting their co-op’s anniversary sale.

“We know REI really values themselves as a member co-op, or at least they say they do,” Lish said. “And we already know members support our goal of having some rights in the workplace and basic dignity as workers.

“With that really broad support from the membership, we think this boycott is going to be the most effective way to drive the response we are looking for.”

– Michael Moore, Union Advocate editor