Apr 6, 2023
Barnes & Noble Education Workers Seek to Unionize, Extending Organizing Wave
, Bloomberg News
(Bloomberg) -- Barnes & Noble Education Inc. employees at a New Jersey store are petitioning to make theirs the company’s first unionized location, extending a wave of organizing in the US retail sector.
Workers say they’ve signed up most of the roughly 70 employees at the store on Rutgers University’s campus. After announcing their organizing campaign to local management, they plan to submit a filing Thursday asking the US National Labor Relations Board to conduct a unionization election. Employees are petitioning to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which currently represents retail workers at Macy’s Inc., H&M Hennes & Mauritz AB and, most recently, Recreational Equipment Inc., where it first secured a foothold last year in New York City.
Barnes & Noble Education didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The company, which retailer Barnes & Noble Inc. spun off in 2015, operates 785 physical bookstores for students and hundreds of online bookstores. It also has exclusive deals with schools and universities to distribute course materials.
Employees say they began discussing unionization late last year in a group chat, and seek to win improvements in their pay, job security and work hours, which they call erratic and insufficient. To prepare their coworkers for any potential anti-union campaign by the company, they’ve been studying anti-union tactics and literature from other major retailers in recent years.
Read More: Undercover Organizers Become Secret Force in Labor Union Wins
The new campaign follows a series of landmark unionization victories since late 2021 at major retail companies including Starbucks Corp., Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc., Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. and Trader Joe’s, though none of those firms has yet reached a collective bargaining agreement with its newly organized staff.
Barnes & Noble Education employee Elizabeth des Ranleau said workers signed up quickly to join the union. “We mostly employ students, and we have a bunch of students that are pro-union,” said des Ranleau, one of around 20 employees on the union’s organizing committee at the store. “They can’t just replace us all.”
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