Unionized workers at closing Apple store question Apple’s reasons

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While Apple was preparing to announce its biggest executive shake-up in over a decade, employees at an Apple store outside Baltimore, Maryland, were still reeling from the news that they would be out of a job come June.Located in the Towson Town Center, a shopping mall in Baltimore’s northern suburbs, the store was one of three closures announced just a week before Apple revealed that CEO Tim Cook was stepping down.

Unlike the two other locations in California and Connecticut, however, the Towson employees will not be transferred to other stores and will have to reapply for open positions elsewhere.

The different tack has led some workers from the Towson store to speculate that Apple may have shuttered the location because it was the first unionized store.

“This is clearly an attempt to bust up the union and to break the spirit, if nothing else, for the people that work here,” Erik Brown, tech lead at the Towson store and acting chief steward for the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) Union, which organized workers at the store in 2022, told Retail Brew.

IAM has since filed an unfair labor practice charge against Apple, accusing the company of discriminating against union employees by denying them the right to transfer to another store and of retaliating against unionizing. The union is also calling for the store to reopen.

“We strongly disagree with the claims made, and we will continue to abide by the agreement that was negotiated and agreed with the union,” Apple spokesperson Brian Bumbery said in a statement. “We look forward to presenting all of the facts to the NLRB.”

Decline rewind: As for Apple’s justification for closing the store, Bumbery said the company made the decision “following the departure of several retailers and declining conditions” at the respective shopping malls.

But Towson store employees and a member of the local chamber of commerce say the business appeared to be doing well.

Brown said staff were given no indication that sales, foot traffic, or customer satisfaction had suffered due to conditions at the mall. Indeed, in his view, the store was one of the main traffic drivers at the Towson Town Center.

Nancy Hafford, executive director of the Towson Chamber of Commerce, told Retail Brew the store appeared to be doing well. “There were always people in there,” she said.

Apple declined multiple requests to elaborate on the specific conditions that were problematic for the Towson store, but both the mall and the surrounding community have struggled with the perception of increased crime.

Whether these perceptions are justified is another question.

The mall challenge: Kevin Gallagher, a former employee and organizer for IAM District 4, which represents the Apple Store union, said crime was similar to other malls in the surrounding area, and noted that crime in general is trending down in Baltimore.

The other side of Apple’s statement announcing the closures—the departure of other retailers from the mall—is harder to contest. Hafford said the vacancy rate at Towson Town Center is around 26%, and there have been a number of high-profile exits in the luxury wing, including Tommy Bahama, Banana Republic, and Louis Vuitton.

What some question is the uniqueness of these challenges.

“The conditions of the Towson Town Center mall are not any different than the conditions of the Columbia mall or the Annapolis mall,” Gallagher said, referring to other nearby shopping centers. “Malls everywhere are in decline.”

• Mall operator GGP, which owns more than 100 retail assets across the US, did not respond to a request for comment.

However, the degree of decline may have been a crucial factor for Apple. The national vacancy rate for malls stood at just 8.5% in 2025, per Colliers, which is significantly less than the Towson location’s. With no current plans to open a new location within 50 miles of the Towson Town Center, store workers are concerned the closure will leave a massive hole in Apple’s service area that will disproportionately impact lower-income communities.

“Many people purchase their Apple products because of that implicit promise that an Apple Store will be there to support them,” he said, “and by closing the store they’re breaking that promise to so many people.”