By Eric Brown
Last month, my son was born.
It should have been a week of pure joy. And it was, but underneath the happiness was something I couldn’t shake: the uncertainty of not knowing whether I’ll have a job, health insurance or a steady paycheck by the time he’s three months old.
I’m a sales lead at the Apple Store at Towson Town Center. I’ve worked there for more than six and a half years, starting as a part-time technical specialist and working my way up through the ranks to a role similar to what most retailers would call an assistant manager. I live in Parkville, Md., in Baltimore County.
Apple isn’t just my job, it’s my career. And for nearly 90 of my coworkers, it’s theirs, too. Apple announced that it will close our store on June 20. It’s not just closing a store. It’s closing down the careers and hopes of local workers.
Here’s what makes this decision different from a typical store closure: two other Apple retail locations are closing at the same time, and workers at those stores are being offered transfers to other locations. We are not. The one thing that sets our store apart from those two? In our view, Apple is breaking the law and carving us out because we have a union.
Four years ago, my coworkers and I made history. We became the first Apple retail store in the United States to be unionized. I joined that effort because I believed in this job and wanted real security in a career I intended to keep building. We knew there might be consequences. We even braced for retaliation. But we never imagined Apple would punish the thousands of people who call Towson “their Apple Store.”
People who had nothing to do with our organizing just wanted to settle a score with us.
My Union (IAM Union) has filed an Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) charge with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), citing discriminatory treatment against unionized workers at the Towson store. The entire Maryland congressional delegation has written a letter to Apple demanding answers. But Apple has yet to change course.
What I want people to understand is what this store means to this community and what its closure will cost.
Towson sits in the heart of Baltimore County and outside Baltimore City. For many people in this region, we are the Apple Store.
Customers tell us regularly they’ve driven more than an hour to reach us, from Pennsylvania, from West Virginia, from deep in the city.
We’re blocks from hospitals, high schools, colleges and businesses.
Students from Towson, Goucher, Stevenson, CCBC, Loyola, John Hopkins, University of Baltimore, Morgan State University and Coppin State University come to us. High school and middle school students come to us. Parents come to us. Senior citizens come to us. People who depend on public transit come to us because we are accessible in a way that other locations are not.
This is what Steve Jobs envisioned when he created Apple retail 25 years ago: not just a place to buy a phone, but a place where technology and community meet.
Our store has been part of this community for more than 20 of those 25 years. To close it suddenly, without offering our workers a path forward, isn’t just a business decision. It’s a betrayal of the people we serve every day and of us.
My oldest daughter starts college in the fall. My youngest daughter turns 3 this year. And my newborn son is sleeping at home right now while I’m trying to figure out what comes next. My coworkers are in similar positions, carrying families, mortgages, medical bills and the quiet fear of watching a stable job disappear.
We’re not asking for charity. We’re asking Apple to do right by us and offer us the same transfer opportunities it extended to workers at its other closing stores.
We’re asking the company that built a brand on thinking differently to think differently about how it treats the workers who made that brand real in this community.
Apple is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. After half a century, it can afford to treat its workers with dignity.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the AFRO.
