GoKawiilA group of two U.S. Senators and seven Members of Congress sent a letter to Tim Cook and John Ternus pressing Apple for answers over the planned closure of its Towson retail store. Here are the details.
A bit of context
Early last month, Apple announced it would close three US stores: Apple Towson Town Center in Towson (MD), Apple North County in Escondido (CA), and Apple Trumbull in Trumbull (CT).
The reason behind these three decisions was roughly the same: they’re located in struggling malls where other retailers have also been leaving.
While the decision to shut down the stores in California and Connecticut went largely unnoticed, the Maryland store is a different story altogether.
That’s because Apple Towson Town Center was the first Apple Store to unionize in June 2022. For this reason, the decision to shut down the store has sparked a dispute between Apple and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM), particularly over whether employees should be allowed to transfer to other Apple retail locations.
In a nutshell, while Apple says the negotiated union agreement only requires transfers within 50 miles of the Towson store, with severance offered otherwise, the IAM Union says Apple is discriminating against unionized workers by denying them the same transfer opportunities given to employees at the other closing stores.
This impasse has now reached Maryland’s congressional delegation, which has sent a letter to Tim Cook and John Ternus pressing Apple for answers over the Towson store closure.
Maryland delegation steps in
Yesterday, a group of nine U.S. Senators and Members of Congress sent a letter addressed to Apple CEO Tim Cook and the company’s next CEO, current Senior Vice President for Hardware Engineering John Ternus, asking the company to detail both its decision to close the Towson store and what support it will provide to affected employees.
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