REI Workers Test The Retailer’s Co-Op Identity

Unionized employees want to change the storied retailer's direction. But they'll have to get through the "member-elected" board first.

The outdoor retailer REI wants you to know it isn’t a typical corporation — it’s a consumer-owned cooperative, with values beyond just making money. Lest you forget, REI puts “co-op” on its store signs. It sells “co-op”-branded bikes, sleeping bags and bear cans. And it invites you, the cooperative member, to vote in its board of directors election every year to “set the direction of the co-op.”

But if the members don’t like where REI is headed, how much power do they actually have to change course?

A union for REI workers wants to find out.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union is promoting two pro-labor candidates for the ballot in REI’s board elections slated for March. The UFCW and its sister union, the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, have organized 11 of REI’s roughly 190 stores since 2022 in a workplace battle that’s prompted union-busting allegations and shaken the company’s progressive reputation.

Though anyone can nominate themselves to serve on the retailer’s board, that doesn’t mean their name will end up on the ballot. The final candidates are selected by the board’s “nominating and governance committee,” which ultimately provides members a menu of potential directors to choose from.