Talk:REI worker organization

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by SL93 (talk) 05:04, 26 March 2022 (UTC)

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• Article history

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• ... that on January 21, 2022, 115 REI union organizers at the outdoor recreation store REI in New York City petitioned for the retailer's first ever union vote? Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/23/business/economy/rei-union-manhattan-store.html
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Andreas Rechnitzer

Created by SquareInARoundHole (talk). Self-nominated at 16:22, 24 February 2022 (UTC).

• Update based on news: ALT1: ... that on March 2, 2022, REI union in New York City became the outdoor recreation store REI's first ever union? Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/business/rei-union-new-york.html

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy compliance:

• Adequate sourcing:
• Neutral: - I'm afraid the article isn't very neutral, it's very anti-company, much more so than the sources we're drawing from. The union organizers' statements are reported on many times and in detail, the company's statements are reported rarely and briefly. I looked at a few random sources, and they're much more balanced than our article - for example, https://mynorthwest.com/340111/homeless-and-starving-seattle-employees-demand-rei-union/ its first sentence is "Tia Kennedy is proud to work in the offices at Seattle’s REI..." I don't see any of that in our article. Here is another source, https://www.thestranger.com/slog/2016/07/11/24328725/rei-workers-call-for-better-pay-and-working-conditions-consider-unionization, its first sentence is "Last year, REI won widespread online praise for its decision to "opt out" of Black Friday." Our article instead has a whole paragraph implying that was a trick to get the company to pay workers less. The Stranger (newspaper) is by no means a right-wing corporate friendly rag, in fact it could be used as an example of a left-wing paper; if we're more anti-company than The Stranger we're doing something very wrong.
• Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook eligibility:

• Cited: - Not quite. I like ALT1 better, as it's about the same subject, yet more specific, date and everything, yet the relevant sentence in the article seems to be the last one "The workers voted 88-14 in support of the union.[3]" which doesn't give the date, and that source link goes to a 2016 article?
• Interesting:
• Other problems: - Again the article statement backing the hook says "workers ... at REI's SoHo store"; we're a global encyclopedia, not everyone in South Africa or New Zealand will know how New York City and SoHo are related, especially since SoHo isn't wikilinked in the article. I also wouldn't overlink the hook, "REI" and "union" shouldn't be blue in two places each; in fact, can you avoid repeating one or both of the words? Maybe you could write the hook so it actually uses the title of the article, REI worker organization? That's not a requirement, but may well help ease the repetition issue. Similarly "outdoor recreation" doesn't need a link, the hook is about a union at a store, and the outdoor recreation doesn't really help you understand either the hook or the article. Finally, if you keep the wording as is, you need a "the" before "REI union".

QPQ: Done.

Overall: The hook is almost fine, it's interesting and can be easily fixed with a bit of grammar and making sure it's backed in the article body. The lack of neutrality is an issue that might take more work. GRuban (talk) 18:06, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

@GRuban: The article is about worker organizations, and the issues they are organizing around, which strongly mirrors other worker organization articles. Including the company's responses is typically the balanced approach that has been taken in other articles I've read on Wikipedia. Including that employees not involved in organizing disagree with the workers in those organizations feels strange to me, given that the article is about the organizing workers, NOT the company itself. SquareInARoundHole (talk) 18:26, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

I'm sorry, where did I say include what "employees who are not involved in organizing" say? This is not an article about an organization, this is an article about a conflict in establishing an organization. The union basically isn't established, except in one store, and the company is resisting its establishment, that's kind of the whole point of the article. Therefore, company employees who are against the union are involved, and they're not only getting much less text in your article, but what text they are getting is mostly slanted against them. Your standard "it's like other Wikipedia articles" is not what our goal is - I don't know what other Wikipedia articles you're referring to, they could be terrible. Our goal is to reflect what the sources say. This article doesn't. It is much more anti-company than the sources. Therefore it's not neutral. --GRuban (talk) 18:44, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

@GRuban: Sorry, I think I misunderstood what you were saying. I understand now and will work on ensuring it is clear the organizing workers like working at REI and want to continue working there, not that they are anti-company. SquareInARoundHole (talk) 19:53, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

@GRuban: REI union is the name of the union itself, so putting "the" in front of it would not be correct in this case, grammatically. SoHo is linked in the article in the top portion. Should it also be linked where the redirect is pointing? I'll work on another alternative. SquareInARoundHole (talk) 18:37, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

OK. Not a big deal. --GRuban (talk) 18:44, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

@GRuban: on the #OptOutside, the first sentence talks about the wide-spread praise, but the thesis of the first paragraph lays out that it's a criticism from workers that the branding did not align with their reality as workers, and that criticism is what I've captured. I'll add in that it was widely praised by the public and corporate workers. SquareInARoundHole (talk) 20:01, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

Ping me when you think you're done with everything, both neutrality (balance throughout, not just one source, that's why I think it'll take more time) and the hook fixes. --GRuban (talk) 20:16, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

@GRuban: The article is ready for another look. SquareInARoundHole (talk) 21:52, 22 March 2022 (UTC)

ALT2 ... that on January 21, 2022, 115 REI worker organizers at the outdoor recreation store REI in New York City petitioned to vote for the retailer's first ever trade union? Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/23/business/economy/rei-union-manhattan-store.html

ALT3: ... that on March 2, 2022, 86% of workers in New York City's REI store voted in favor of the outdoor recreation retailer's first ever trade union, REI union SoHo? Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/business/rei-union-new-york.html

@SquareInARoundHole: Looked. Thank you for improving, but the NPOV isn't there yet. In order to make what I'm asking for more clear, I wrote a long, long, detailed, thorough, painstaking (with accent on the pain!) breakdown at User:GRuban/NPOV, a detailed breakdown. Please read it, I hope it is thorough enough to explain what we're going for here. (Or maybe you'll consider it a different kind of breakdown - so it goes.) --GRuban (talk) 13:57, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Also you still haven't fixed the part I pointed out that the last sentence, "The workers voted 88-14..." neither has a date, nor is backed by the source. I think you meant to use a different source? And the date is mentioned in the hook and lead, which should be a summary of the body, so you want to give the date in the body as well, and this seems to be a good place for it. --GRuban (talk) 14:50, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Also - not a DYK issue - "if you contacted" is probably not good - we very rarely or never address the reader with "you" directly, it's way too personal and conversational, we're an encyclopedia, "stuffy" could be our middle name. --GRuban (talk) 14:53, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

@GRuban: Fixed the citation issue with the vote. Not sure how I ended up with the wrong citation there. Will look over the NPOV write-up. I don't take any offense, either, by the way. I think writing about criticism is difficult to do and expected more notes from you. SquareInARoundHole (talk) 18:13, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

@GRuban: Sorry if my original response came across that I thought it was done. I definitely was hoping for more direction (which you absolutely delivered!) on how to improve the neutrality beyond just adding company responses to allegations and criticism. I hope that the current version does a much better job of representing a more neutral tone of the criticism of the company and is close to done. SquareInARoundHole (talk) 20:56, 23 March 2022 (UTC)

Much better in terms of balance. Now, of course, the article is really long, but I can't have it both ways, can I? I tweaked a couple of trivial grammar points directly. Approved! I prefer ALT3 as the best hook, then ALT1. --GRuban (talk) 15:23, 24 March 2022 (UTC)

@GRuban: I think I'm partial to ALT3 now. Thank you for the work. SquareInARoundHole (talk) 16:08, 24 March 2022 (UTC)