(Photo by Jen Lobo/Getty Images)
This article was first published by KNKX and Cascade PBS.
Unionized REI employees are calling on members of the outdoor retail co-op to vote no in this year’s board of director elections after the company excluded two union-backed candidates from the ballot.
The two were Tefere Gebre, chief program officer at the international environmental advocacy group Greenpeace USA, and Shemona Moreno, a Seattle climate activist who leads the nonprofit 350 Seattle.
Anyone who has an active REI membership can vote in its board elections. Members can also nominate themselves to run for a board seat, but bylaw changes in the early 2000s gave the existing board final say over who gets on the ballot.
At a press conference and rally outside the Seattle REI store on Monday, union members and labor organizers said the election process has grown undemocratic, and that the restrictive board rules are reflective of REI’s shift away from its co-op roots.
“REI gamed the rules so they can keep anyone they don’t like off members’ ballots,” said Sarah Cherin, chief of staff at UFCW 3000, which represents unionized REI workers in Bellingham. “We are sending REI a message by voting no in their board election and demanding that REI respect the rights of its members and workers.”
The labor-backed candidates, Moreno and Gebre, ran extensive social media campaigns and gathered signatures from thousands of members asking the board to let them on the ballot.
But when the board released its approved list of candidates for three open seats on Monday, March 3, Gebre and Moreno’s names were conspicuously absent. The board nominated three candidates, which means this year’s election will be noncompetitive. Two of the candidates — PolicyLink CEO Michael McAfee and Elizabeth Huebner, former senior vice president and CFO for Getty Images — are incumbent board members. The third candidate is Monica Schwartz, executive vice president and chief digital officer of BJ’s Wholesale Club.
Moreno acknowledged in a January interview with Cascade PBS and KNKX that her odds of making it on the ballot were low. The board lists a preference for candidates with high-level business experience at similarly sized organizations, which Moreno doesn’t have. REI also said they did not receive her application, which Moreno disputes.
Gebre was slightly more optimistic about his chances. In addition to his current role at Greenpeace, Gebre formerly worked as vice president of the AFL-CIO. He’s also a former board member of United Way U.S.A.
“I feel like I was really well-qualified,” Gebre said in an interview Monday. “I’ve served in a lot of big organizations; I felt like from the way they were describing the way they wanted to form the board, I felt like I would fit in there.”
REI didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on why Gebre wasn’t included on the ballot. Gebre thinks it’s because he’s outspokenly pro-union.
“I was not apologetic in saying why I wanted to be on the board, and that was that I wanted to represent the workers and I want to make sure that the workers are heard by the board and not seen as disposable,” Gebre said. “It’s clear from their decisions that they don’t want that voice inside the board.”
Workers at 11 REI stores across the country have voted to unionize since 2022, but the unions have yet to reach a contract with the company. Workers have accused REI of union-busting and retaliating against employees trying to organize by withholding raises and bonuses, a claim the company denies.
“It really feels like green vests are no longer valued,” said Tini Alexander, a senior shop mechanic at the REI in Bellingham.
Alexander and other workers at the news conference on Monday spoke of problems with low wages, short staffing and a lack of training for new employees. They also expressed frustration about the board’s recent decision to sign a letter supporting U.S Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum, a Trump-administration appointee who has been criticized by environmental activists for supporting oil and natural gas drilling on public lands.
“This is the kind of profit-over-people playbook that we would have expected from a corporation, from a big polluter, but not from a member-owned co-op,” said Ben Smith, senior strategic partnerships advisor at Greenpeace who spoke at the rally on Monday. “Our message to REI is simple: Respect your workers and get back to your co-op roots.”
REI members have until midnight on May 1 to cast ballots in this year’s election. They can choose to either vote “for” or “withhold.” The union is asking members to select “withhold” on all three candidates.
If the number of “withhold” votes is greater than the number of “for” votes in an uncontested election, the seat the candidate was running for will be considered vacant, according to the REI board bylaws. The remaining directors would then fill that vacancy “by appointing a director, chosen from a slate of potential candidates nominated by the Nominating and Governance Committee, to a term expiring at the next annual meeting of members,” the bylaws say.
The board’s rules are “very arcane,” said Matt McIntosh, an REI member and organizer with UFCW 3000 who attended the rally on Monday.
After the news conference, McIntosh and other organizers distributed pamphlets with information about the election to midday shoppers at the Seattle REI store. A lot of people said they didn’t know an election was happening. Overall, people seemed “super-receptive” to the idea of voting “withhold,” McIntosh said.
“It takes five minutes online and people like to vote,” McIntosh said. “People are upset right now for good reason about a variety of things, so it’s an easy thing that people can do to make their voice heard.”
In addition to giving existing board directors power over who appears on the ballot, REI’s bylaws also prohibit REI employees from sitting on the board. Unionized REI employees backed a bill in Olympia this session that would require any Washington-based co-op with more than 2,500 employees to reserve two seats on its board of directors for workers. The bill missed the deadline to get voted out of committee, and appears to be dead for the session.