First Apple employees form union

Employees at Apple’s retail store in Towson, Maryland – a Baltimore suburb – are the first to form a union.

The workers voted overwhelmingly to form the Coalition of Organized Retail Employees (CORE – get it?) and join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers.

They may soon be joined by staff at Apple’s stores in New York’s Grand Central Terminal and World Trade Center, among others.

The unionization efforts are part of a national trend among retail and warehouse workers to organize, joining staff at Amazon and Starbucks in forming unions.

Even though Cupertino reportedly is fighting the effort, this will by no means be the last Apple store to unionize.

It’ll be interesting to see which stores are next.

– Leander Kahney, EIC.

“That’s the moment that an artist really decides who he or she is. If they keep on risking failure, they’re still artists. Dylan and Picasso were always risking failure. This Apple thing is that way for me. I don’t want to fail, of course. But even though I didn’t know how bad things really were, I still had a lot to think about before I said yes. I had to consider the implications for Pixar, for my family, for my reputation. I decided that I didn’t really care, because this is what I want to do. If I try my best and fail, well, I tried my best. What makes you become conservative is realizing that you have something to lose. Remember The Whole Earth Catalog? The last edition had a photo on the back cover of a remote country road you might find yourself on while hitchhiking up to Oregon. It was a beautiful shot, and it had a caption that really grabbed me. It said: ‘Stay hungry. Stay foolish.’ It wasn’t an ad for anything–just one of Stewart Brand’s profound statements. It’s wisdom. ‘Stay hungry. Stay foolish.’” – Steve Jobs