IAM Union to the core

I was always a proud union worker, if for no other reason than I never saw any sense to the trickle-down notion that if we work hard, the business we work for will succeed, and then they will share their abundant profits with the workers out of the goodness of their hearts. I mean, that sounds great in theory, but while you're pushing that broom, the fat cats are buying diamond tips for their shoelaces.

I pushed a broom and freight trucks galore and even the cash register now and then, starting when I was 17 and still in high school. I worked at the Great Atlantic And Pacific Tea Company, what most people called the A&P, and there I was, a barefoot boy with cheek of tan making union wages - about 5 times what my friends who worked at Gino's and McDonald's made. I was a member of the Retail Clerks International Union, Local 692. I paid monthly dues and got to go strike meetings and hear stirring pro-labor speeches. And I met with our shop steward, a really cool guy from the produce department whose reply, every time you voiced some sort of concern, was always, "Don't worry about it. I'll take care of it."  And he did.

I moved on to other jobs, and was happy to wind up for the last three decades of my working days as a member of the Baltimore County Federation of Public Employees, whose contract gave us honest wages and terrific benefits.

Now, the A&P where I worked surrounded by a lovely vista of Oreo cookies, Dad's Root Beer, and Esskay Chipped Beef was in the Dulaney Plaza in beautiful Towson, MD. The store is gone now; it's now one of those hippie stores with subdued lights and huge tubs of dried mung beans and loaves of bread so replete with nuts and seeds that we are considering sending planeloads of them to Ukraine to be lobbed at the Russian invaders, so heavy are they. 

Across the street from Dulaney Plaza stands Towsontown Centre, formerly Towson Plaza, formerly a farm field. You will note that malls do not like to be called "malls" so much, so they go by "The Shoppes at O'Hoolahan's Crossing" or whatever. But Towsontown Center is a BA mall, four stories packed with this, that, and the next thing, including Apple products!

And I am proud to announce that the Apple Store in that mall has officially formed a union!  Last Saturday, workers at the nearby Apple Towson Town Center voted to organize into the Coalition of Organized Retail Employees (CORE). 

Get it?  Apple. Core!

The incipient union will join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM). "I applaud the courage displayed by CORE members at the Apple store in Towson for achieving this historic victory," says IAM international president Robert Martinez Jr. in a statement. "They made a huge sacrifice for thousands of Apple employees across the nation who had all eyes on this election."

This past April, the Starbucks at 1209 North Charles Street in Baltimore became the first in Maryland to unionize. Unions are coming back, one reason being that labor has seen greater power over corporations since the pandemic.

Both of these events were big news on national TV. Solidarity forever!