56 workers voted to join the Communications Workers of America. This is the second Apple store in the US where workers have joined a union.

Workers at the Apple store in Oklahoma City’s Penn Square voted 56 to 32 to join the Communications Workers of America as a union. The National Labor Relations Board, which was in charge of the election, said that all regular full-time and part-time employees at the store, 95 in total, were eligible to vote.

This was only the second election held for an Apple store in the US. In June, workers in Maryland decided to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers by voting to join a union. In Atlanta, there was supposed to be another election, but the CWA called it off, saying that the company had scared workers so much that a fair election was “impossible.”

What happened to the union drive at Apple stores?

Apple has been accused of anti-union tactics on multiple occasions, including in Oklahoma, where the CWA filed a complaint with the NLRB earlier this month. According to the union, Apple questioned and spied on workers at the Penn Square store, forced them to attend meetings (even on the day of the launch of the iPhone 14 Plus), and told them that if they voted to join a union, they wouldn’t get the same benefits as non-unionized stores. The last point has been backed up by a report from Bloomberg that said Apple told workers at its unionized store in Maryland that they would have to bargain for the same benefits as workers at its other stores.

The CWA said that the same thing happened in Atlanta and New York. The NLRB looked into the latter claims and just recently said that it agreed with them and was filing its own complaint against Apple. Before the election in Maryland, Apple hired lawyers who were against unions and had executives try to stop employees from joining a union.