> Media literacy time, folks! Does the corporation have an incentive to lie about its reasons for closing this place?
You might have had a point, if it was some regular company and everything was going fine at the location; but REI is a co-op, and three break-ins in a week (including a car-ramming) is not a reasonable environment to operate in.
Media literacy doesn't mean applying some rough heuristic that the "true" motive is the most selfish/embarrassing spin you can dig up.
REI is a customer owned co-op with an elected board not too dissimilar to many public corporations. Employees don't get particularly strong representation here. When I've followed the elections they tend to be corporate types running. There tended to be a focus on conservation and other outdoorsy-type related values, but co-op employees don't hold any special status in the governance structure.
> An update to our story on the REI closure: OB has learned that workers at the Portland store were actively working to unionize in recent months.
https://twitter.com/OregonBusiness/status/164849236952708300...
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