REI is having an identification disaster. Initially shaped as a co-op in 1938, it earned a powerful status in our neighborhood for its dedication to environmental points, truthful remedy of staff, and local weather schooling initiatives. These values fostered generations of loyal prospects who felt good about supporting the corporate.
However over the previous few years, REI has appointed a decidedly corporate-leaning board of administrators, with former executives from Exxon Mobil, Starbucks, and McKinsey. Workers establish this shift as the beginning of anti-worker remedy on the firm, like unpredictable scheduling and waves of layoffs, which the corporate attributes to sluggish gross sales.
And whereas it’s true that REI’s funds have fluctuated in recent times, experiences of its monetary dying are vastly exaggerated. In 2020, within the first 12 months of COVID-19, the corporate offered its newly accomplished Bellevue headquarters to Meta for $390 million. After which when individuals took to the outside for protected train, REI’s gross sales boomed: up 37% in 2021 to a complete of $3.7 billion, reporting a $97.7 million revenue.
REI reported a slight uptick to $3.8 billion in income in 2022 and $3.76 billion in 2023, however one way or the other nonetheless managed to lose hundreds of thousands in each years. That mismanagement on the prime has resulted in repeated waves of layoffs: 167 individuals have been laid off in 2023, then 357 in 2024, and 428 extra this month, shuttering its beloved out of doors schooling Experiences arm.
In 2022, REI’s New York Metropolis SoHo location was the primary of its 187 shops to unionize. 9 others, together with their Bellingham retailer, have since adopted swimsuit. REI has refused to barter a contract with the REI Union for over two years now and retained Morgan Lewis, a infamous union-busting regulation agency that additionally represents Amazon and SpaceX, and beforehand counted Donald Trump as a shopper. This week, 63 lawmakers together with Senator Bernie Sanders despatched a letter to REI urging them to discount pretty with their staff and cease their union-busting exercise.
CEO Eric Artz introduced his retirement final week, with new CEO Mary Beth Laughton taking on on February 3. She inherits an organization with shaky funds and a once-sterling public picture that has suffered in recent times.
REI claims they’ve a clear and democratic course of for his or her annual board elections, but candidates should be authorized by the present board to even seem on the poll to be voted on by its members. Employees are at the moment ineligible to run for the board, as properly. Nonetheless, Shemona Moreno, a neighborhood local weather activist, longtime REI member, and REI Union-endorsed candidate, is operating to hopefully steer REI again to its roots.
The present board will resolve which candidates can be allowed on the poll at their assembly on Monday, February 3.
You’re operating to assist return REI to its roots. Are you able to introduce your self to people who don’t already find out about what you do?
Shemona Moreno: I am the manager director at 350 Seattle. We’re a neighborhood grassroots non-profit centered on local weather justice and the intersections of local weather and staff’ rights, abolition, and quite a lot of points as a result of we consider we will not resolve our local weather disaster in a silo.
I have been with 350 Seattle since proper after Trump was elected the primary time. I used to be a nanny on the time. That was an activating second for me to maneuver from supporting from the sidelines to turning into extra of a participant in my neighborhood and studying the way to be an activist. So I began off as a volunteer with 350 Seattle, after which I had the chance to affix the workers in 2018. I turned government director two years in the past, and am beginning my third 12 months as ED now.
I would not say I’ve all the time been a local weather activist, but it surely’s one thing I grew into. My mom was actually into activism, particularly round racial justice points and police accountability, so I grew up going to actions and action-planning conferences with my mother. And right here I’m now doing comparable work, working with individuals who care about what our future goes to seem like. The query is: how are we thriving in our future and never simply surviving?
What are some tasks you’ve labored on with 350 Seattle that you simply’re happy with?
Round 2018 when the Inexperienced New Deal got here onto the scene, we made a little bit of a pivot at 350 Seattle to be centered extra on options that can exchange plenty of this infrastructure that we’re attempting to dismantle. We nonetheless want water. We nonetheless want meals. So how are we doing that sustainably? What are the options that work with the neighborhood as an alternative of in opposition to it?
We ran a marketing campaign known as Photo voltaic Faculties, working with different unions just like the Seattle Training Affiliation and MLK Labor to take levy cash and make investments it in renewable power. We felt strongly we must be placing photo voltaic panels on prime of our colleges, and supply heating, cooling, and air filtration to all of our colleges to maintain our children protected. We gained that, and people tasks are actually underway.
One other marketing campaign we ran and gained was known as Wholesome By means of Warmth and Smoke, which was one other levy struggle. We pushed Seattle Parks to spend money on correct heating and cooling as a result of out of the 26 neighborhood facilities in Seattle, solely three or 4 of them have air con. Within the 2021 warmth dome, individuals died as a result of they did not have wherever to go.
What’s the pitch on your candidacy? What separates you from REI’s present board members?
I’m a voice for the individuals who wouldn’t have illustration on that board. I am a voice for the employees. I am additionally a voice for the individuals who really care about preserving the planet, the air, and the water, and the concerns that is going to take.
As you have a look at these points which might be confronting REI, what’s your imaginative and prescient for what REI might be?
What’s REI now? What are they doing? And who’re they aligning themselves to? We’re seeing them eliminate plenty of the issues that assist the members and the employees. We simply noticed a bunch of layoffs. So what’s subsequent? What else is REI going to compromise on for the sake of making a living for just a few individuals?
I believe we may be taught rather a lot from the employees who really converse to the customers at brick and mortar shops. The members have good concepts. There’s worth there. I believe you can do an audit and ask, what do individuals need from REI? And never simply individuals who have plenty of cash, however common individuals who may say, ‘I’d go there much more if it was accessible to me on this method.’
Folks are actually pondering fastidiously about how they spend their cash. Does REI need to be a kind of firms that is placed on a boycott listing? Or do they need to be one of many firms that is celebrated? We may have an organization right here that is interested by us, that cares concerning the points that we care about. And proper now, it looks like REI doesn’t.
Do you could have any touch upon the information that REI is canceling its Experiences arm? Is that this the sort of factor you’ll assist if you happen to have been on the board?
After I first joined REI as a member, I did a number of the Experiences earlier than I purchased something. I used to be simply moving into climbing and discovered about totally different instruments, the way to hold myself protected, what are the issues that I have to know after I begin journeying out into the wild to verify I’m doing it respectfully.
I believe these Experiences set REI other than its rivals for me. So this information is a bummer. I am curious what led to that call. It looks like the capitalist mindset of ‘it wasn’t making a living, subsequently, it wasn’t helpful.’ However can we all the time must be interested by whether or not or not one thing is making a living? Is {that a} good metric of actual worth?
With over 3,000 members supporting your candidacy and lawmakers urging REI to take heed to their staff, do you see this as a mandate on your board seat?
It’s a clear mandate. I consider one hundred pc that issues want to vary. On the very least, we should always change the best way the co-op board operates. There must be illustration from staff. It isn’t onerous! We noticed PCC do it and PCC continues to be round. It did not implode by including two staff’ voices onto that board.
One other place we will begin is bargaining with the union in good religion. Listening to your staff round issues of safety and issues that should be mounted, that can be not an unimaginable job. You may in all probability spend much less cash on it than you’ll paying the union-busting agency that is represented the likes of Amazon and Trump. Like, come on. Do you actually need to align your self with them? What does success seem like for this firm if they are going to proceed to alienate their base?
REI is now claiming they by no means acquired your utility for the board election. However you’ve proven me screenshots of your submission, despatched forward of the deadline. What offers?
I emailed my utility earlier than the deadline. The perfect case state of affairs is somebody did not examine their spam folder. The worst case state of affairs is REI is afraid of a pro-staff candidate for Board. This isn’t the REI I do know and love. I utilized to run for the board to be a voice for the individuals in inexperienced vests who make REI nice however who will not be allowed a voice on the co-op’s board of administrators. Greater than 3,000 REI members and prospects signed a petition in assist of my candidacy for the board to deliver REI again to its roots, and make sure the firm walks their speak on sustainability and employee rights. REI should take heed to its member-owners.
So the place does this go from right here? If REI rejects your candidacy, are you planning to run once more?
There’s a invoice within the Washington State Legislature that might require Washington companies designated as a co-op to incorporate staff on the board and comply with a clear democratic course of for elections. I personally rally readers to assist that invoice. Contact your legislators and ensure they’re listening to all of our voices throughout Washington State in assist of that invoice.
That’s a very good subsequent step if I do not make it onto the board. And I am open to operating once more if that’s one thing staff within the union would really like of me. However this isn’t all about me. It is concerning the staff at REI and the union. I am simply an ally, and that is how I may be in assist of the union and the employees, by following their lead. I’d certainly do it once more.
Now we have to face up and maintain them accountable as a result of on the finish of the day, they’re making all this cash, however we are the individuals who really purchase issues. We are the those that work.
They can not do that with out us. They want us.