ATLANTA — Sydney Rhodes’s frustration was rising. Seated at a hotel conference table across the street from the Apple store where she worked in Atlanta, she listened as her boss suggested to a dozen colleagues that they should be grateful to be paid more than other retail employees.
It was among a series of arguments he made this month at an off-site meeting ahead of the store’s vote on whether to join the Communications Workers of America union. Ms. Rhodes, a 26-year-old union organizer, considered the roughly $4 more per hour that Apple paid relative to other stores insufficient.
Before a recent promotion, she supported herself by bouncing from part-time work helping customers with iPhones to a second job delivering Amazon packages to a third shift loading boxes at FedEx. She had championed the union because she thought it could boost hourly pay and increase full-time opportunities for a largely part-time staff.
In April, Ms. Rhodes’s advocacy helped garner support from 70 percent of the store’s 100-plus workers for a union election. But as her boss pushed back over dinner at a Sheraton Hotel, she could sense that support beginning to fray.
“Any time someone asked me a question,” she said, “he would come with an opinion about unions that didn’t apply to us at all.”
The exchanges cut to the heart of a contest with implications for some 272 Apple stores across the United States. Two decades after redefining retail with sleek architecture and concierge tech support, Apple...
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