Biden praises newly unionized Apple workers

President Biden on Monday praised workers at an Apple store near Baltimore that voted to form the first American union at the Silicon Valley tech giant.

“I’m proud of them,” Biden told reporters. 

“You know, workers have a right to determine under what conditions they’re gonna work or not,” he continued. “And I think the thing that everybody kind of misunderstands about unions, they tend to be, especially in the trades, the best workers in the world.”

A majority of the 100 workers at Apple’s Towson, Md., location voted to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, according to a National Labor Relations Board count conducted Saturday.

The landslide win at the Apple store follows a series of wins for labor at previously unorganized companies, including Amazon and Starbucks, in recent months.

Biden, who has described himself as at the most pro-union president ever, has celebrated those wins.

Apple workers in New York and Atlanta have also begun pushing for unionization, although workers at the latter recently withdrew their request for an election, with the union saying that those workers were experiencing retaliation from management.