When Co-ops Union Bust: Why Canada Needs a Labour Neutrality Standard

Olivia Champagne
May 13th, 2026

Right now, workers at REI Co-op, a consumer cooperative with 24 million members and nearly $4 billion in annual revenue, are asking the public to boycott their employer's biggest sale of the year.

Since 2022, workers at 11 REI locations across the US have unionized, forming the REI Workers Union. For four years, REI's management has refused to reach its first collective agreement contract, slashed benefits, and engaged in what workers describe as sustained union busting efforts. This week, the REI Workers Union voted to authorize a boycott of the REI's Anniversary Sale (from May 15 to 25) and are asking supporters to leaflet outside stores and stay out of them entirely.

REI has built an entire brand around being a co-op. But while it markets that identity at every opportunity, it’s simultaneously fighting its own workers’ efforts to organize.

Democratic Ownership Doesn't Necessarily Trickle Down to Workers

It would be easy to write REI off, as an outlier user co-operative that got too big, too corporate, too far from its original vision. A story we're all too familiar with the tragic downfall of MEC in 2020.  But the uncomfortable truth is that the ownership structure of a consumer cooperative does not guarantees solidarity with the workers that sustain it.

Democratic member governance and respect for workers' rights are naturally aligned. Both rooted in the conviction that people, organized collectively, can meet their own needs. The cooperative sector has floated along decades on the assumption that being a co-op makes you 'one of the good guys'.
REI is a stress test of that assumption.

Across the Border, They're Having the Conversation We're Avoiding

In the United States, the cooperative movement has started to reckon with this. The US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, through their Union Co-ops Council, developed a formal labour neutrality framework and brought it to a member vote in 2025. It passed!

A concrete and actionable pledge is now live: if your workers choose to organize, you stay neutral. No union-busting campaigns. No dragging out certification. Just recognition and good faith bargaining. The Union Co-ops Action Group continues to organize, build their listserv and grow a community of cooperatives committed to holding themselves to that standard.

Canada currently has no equivalent labour neutrality standard. From the cooperative sector, there no sector-wide standard, no formal commitment, no mechanism by which cooperatives can distinguish themselves from employers like REI.

What is Labour Neutrality?

Labour Neutrality means an employer commits to staying neutral when its workers choose to form or join a union: taking no position for or against, refraining from any conduct that could discourage organizing, and agreeing to voluntarily recognize and bargain in good faith if workers do organize.

Canadian law already prohibits employers, and by extension co-operatives, from interfering with unionization. But legal compliance isn't solidarity. A sector-level labour neutrality commitment is how the cooperative sector can demonstrate, concretely, that standing with workers applies to their own workplaces too.

The question the REI situation forces on us is simple: whose side are we on when it applies to our own workplaces?

At SEIZE, we believe that Canada’s Cooperative sector has the values, principles and political momentum to answer that clearly and loudly. If you're a cooperative, a union, or an allied organization ready to help build that answer together, we want to hear from you.

Get in touch:
union.coops[@]solidarityeconomy.ca

  • In the meantime:
    The REI Union boycott runs May 15–25, 2026. Don't cross the line. If you want to leaflet your local REI, sign up here.
  • Want to show up for REI workers beyond the boycott?
    Support the REI Union gear shop a portion of every purchase goes directly to their strike support fund.