REI Punished Unionized Workers in Berkeley by Holding Back Raises, Labor Board Alleges

National Labor Relations Board investigators allege that outdoor equipment retailer REI illegally excluded unionized employees in Berkeley and elsewhere from pay increases and bonuses given to non-unionized workers, according to a new complaint.

The complaint, issued Wednesday by the NLRB’s regional director in Oakland, means investigators have found enough evidence to support charges that REI withheld those benefits from hundreds of employees at nine stores to discourage union membership. For years, the company has regularly rewarded workers with annual merit raises and bonuses.

“It’s vindication, vindication that the workers deserve this pay,” said Jim Araby, who directs strategic campaigns for United Food and Commercial Workers Local 5, which represents REI employees in Berkeley. “It is a violation of the status quo to not give a benefit to workers just because they organized, where all the other workers in the REI co-op have received this.”

By law, employers are prohibited from retaliating against workers for coming together to try to improve job conditions and from unilaterally changing the terms of employment while bargaining with a union for an initial contract. Of the 11 REI stores that have unionized since 2022, not one has reached a labor contract with the retailer, which operates more than 180 stores in the U.S. and has more than 16,000 employees.

A company spokesperson said REI will continue to bargain in good faith with the stores now represented by UFCW locals. The NLRB complaint covers the first two locations that successfully unionized in New York City and Berkeley, plus seven others.

“Federal law requires us to bargain in good faith on all aspects of the employment agreement, including pay and benefits, rather than making unilateral changes. We’re actively negotiating these topics with the union, so no pay changes have been implemented — there’s nothing to ‘withhold,’” the spokesperson wrote in an email.

A hearing before an NLRB administrative law judge is scheduled to begin Dec. 9 unless the company settles the case before then.

The complaint comes after REI, which brands itself as a consumer co-op, has faced dozens of accusations of unfair labor practices during contract negotiations that workers say have moved at a glacial pace.

In 2023, REI hired the law firm Morgan Lewis to represent the company in bargaining and against charges of unfair labor practices before the NLRB. Morgan Lewis is also representing SpaceX in a separate case challenging the constitutionality of the 90-year-old agency in federal court.

The REI complaint also comes at a tumultuous time for the NLRB. Last month, President Trump — himself a one-time Morgan Lewis client — fired Democratic board member Gwynne Wilcox before her term had expired, giving him three vacant seats to fill on the five-member board, which essentially functions as a panel of appeals judges for workers’ complaints.

After Wilcox sued, a federal judge reinstated her on March 6, finding that the president didn’t have the authority to remove her without cause. The administration appealed that ruling.

Trump’s actions and the barrage of litigation by employers threatening the agency’s existence could make it more challenging for workers to assert their rights to organize, according to Wilma Liebman, who chaired the NLRB during President Obama’s administration.

“It’s a very volatile period in the law and in government that, I think, doesn’t bode well for the enforcement of workers’ rights,” said Liebman, an adjunct law professor at New York University who also served on the NLRB under Presidents Bush and Clinton. “Hopefully, the system works well enough that a case like this [on REI] can proceed.”

Samuel Wirt, who works at the REI Berkeley store helping customers select camping and climbing gear, said he hopes the complaint by the agency’s investigators pressures the company to live up to its co-op values.

Unionized employees are asking customer members to reject candidates to REI’s board, which oversees executive decisions, in protest, Wirt said. The company’s board election, which started earlier this month, ends May 1.

“If they’re not interested in doing the right thing by us, then we’re going to make them do the right thing by us,” said Wirt, 35, a bargaining committee member. “It’s our place as workers to assert that we’re worth something.”