REI Fired A Popular Manager For Not Immediately Reporting Union Chatter

The incident shows how aggressively the liberal-branded retailer is responding to union organizing -- and how low-level managers are caught in the middle.

When William Littig showed up for work at his REI store on Feb. 21, it didn’t take long for him to realize it would be his last day.

Two managers who were visiting from other stores called him into a closed-door meeting, Littig recalled. One of them read from a paper that turned out to be his termination notice.

The manager said Littig had been “made aware” that REI employees “were unhappy with store leadership and were discussing ways to effectuate change.” Littig, the manager read on, had failed to “escalate the situation to the appropriate leaders in a timely manner.”

Littig insisted he’d alerted the company within days, and refused to sign the letter. He handed in his store keys and green vest and quietly left out a side door, leaving behind four and a half years at a company he’d loved, with no severance pay and a little more than a week on his health insurance.

The firing of a popular department manager shocked the store’s workers, according HuffPost interviews with several employees. It revealed the aggressive response of REI ― a customer-owned cooperative known for its progressive image ― to a union effort that’s organized nine stores so far. And it underscored the difficult, sometimes impossible position that companies put low-level managers in when their underlings start to discuss unions.