UPDATE (December 1, 2025): Back Market has declined to voluntarily recognize Back Makers United and will instead proceed to a National Labor Relations Board election. The company has retained Bond Schoeneck & King, a law firm known for its union avoidance work. “This is super disappointing from the company considering our status as a B Corp and our commitment to being leaders on societal change,” said John LaMere, an organizer with Back Makers United. “We know we will win this election as we have overwhelming support amongst eligible employees.”
On Monday, November 24, employees at Back Market’s US operation delivered a letter to CEO Thibaud Hug de Larauze announcing the formation of Back Makers United, a union affiliated with OPEIU Local 153. With authorization cards signed by 75% of eligible employees, the nascent union is asking the company to voluntarily recognize their right to collectively bargain.
That the announcement arrived days before Black Friday is more accident than intention, but the irony is hard to miss. This is the peak of e-commerce’s busiest season, a period when the small US team carries outsized responsibility for a company valued at $5.7 billion and backed by investors including Goldman Sachs and Al Gore’s Generation Investment Management. “We wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for the incredible people that built this thing,” said John LaMere, an account manager who helped lead the organizing effort. “We’ve got to make sure that as the company grows and hits these incredible new highs, all of the people that built it get their fair shake.”
Back Makers United is part of a growing wave of tech workers exercising their right to organize. While warehouse workers at Amazon and delivery drivers at various gig economy platforms have drawn headlines for their campaigns, white-collar e-commerce employees have remained largely unorganized. The Back Market effort joins a small but growing cohort of tech-adjacent office unions, following successful campaigns at the New York Times, the Washington Post, and most recently Kickstarter.
The Transatlantic Disconnect
Back Market, headquartered in Paris, has built its brand on sustainability. The company operates a marketplace for refurbished electronics, positioning itself as an environmentally conscious alternative to buying new devices. It holds B Corp certification and carries a French designation as a mission-based society. One of its internal mottos, according to LaMere, is “it’s not green enough,” a reminder to employees that there is always a better, more sustainable approach to find.
But workers in New York say that commitment to sustainability has not extended to the sustainability of their own livelihoods. The core issue, as LaMere describes it, is a culture gap between European leadership and the realities of working in one of America’s most expensive cities. There are no C-suite executives in the US office. Decisions about compensation are made an ocean away by people who, as LaMere put it, “just don’t live here.”
Housing costs in New York have risen dramatically, outpacing other major US metropolitan areas. LaMere noted that rent went up almost 6% last year, while most Back Market employees received raises of 2 to 3 percent. “Most people saw what was essentially a pay cut,” he said. Some employees who have been with the company for five years earn less than $70,000 annually, and LaMere himself says he has been told he falls below the stated salary band for his position.
Under French labor law, employees benefit from works councils that provide representation and a seat at the table. Terminating an employee requires an arbitration process with built-in protections. American workers, employed at will, enjoy no such safeguards.
The Tipping Point
In late August, a colleague who had been with Back Market for nearly five years was terminated without warning. This employee had been instrumental in building out their department and had been on a call with LaMere until 11 p.m. the night before, still working on a project. The next morning at 9 a.m., an email announcing the departure went out to the entire team before the employee had even been called into the meeting with HR
“The way that they described it to me was like a humiliation ritual,” LaMere recalled. The incident crystallized anxieties that had been building throughout the year, a period marked by a wave of departures as employees left for better opportunities elsewhere and a round of firings that felt, to those who remained, arbitrary and cold.
LaMere and his colleague Steven Rich began organizing in earnest shortly after. They reached out to OPEIU Local 153 on the recommendation of workers at Kickstarter United, which had recently ratified a groundbreaking contract that included protections against AI displacement and a four-day workweek. By mid-October, Back Makers United had secured authorization cards from a supermajority of eligible employees.
“As a small but mighty team, we carry important objectives for our international company’s growth in the US,” said Steven Rich, a five-year Back Market employee. “Through unionization, we will ensure that our jobs remain sustainable and equitable.”
The B Corp Question
The workers are framing voluntary recognition not as a demand but as an invitation for leadership to live up to its stated principles. B Corp standards explicitly state that interfering with workers’ freedom of association and right to collective bargaining would be grounds for ineligibility. Back Market already works alongside union representation in its French and Barcelona offices.
“We are in a very unique position where we can grow as a company and still do more good instead of less,” LaMere said, paraphrasing the company’s chief marketing officer. The workers believe that extends to how the company treats its own people. After the summer’s departures and firings, he offered what has become something of a rallying cry for the organizers: “I felt appreciated, but I did not feel valued.”
While white-collar e-commerce workers have historically been difficult to organize, Benjamin Sachs, a labor law professor at Harvard, has argued that unionization has become an important response to workplace uncertainty in professional settings. Labor activist Puja Datta frames it differently: workers need the ability to collectively bargain for themselves because they are the only ones truly invested in what’s happening to them.
“E-commerce has remained largely untouched by organized labor,” said Scott Williams, lead organizer at OPEIU Local 153. “Back Market workers are showing that even in sectors resistant to unions, workers can build solidarity.”
The union’s priorities for a first contract reflect the specific pressures of working in New York for a European employer. Cost of living adjustments top the list, along with a transition from at-will employment to just cause termination protections. Workers are also seeking a separate pool of sick days, rather than the current system in which all paid time off is lumped together, requiring colleagues to donate their own PTO to anyone facing a serious illness.
Waiting for an Answer
Shortly before LaMere spoke with LaborWise, he received an email from CEO Thibaud Hug de Larauze. The company, the email said, would respect the union’s requested deadline and provide an answer on voluntary recognition by Monday, December 1.
“I’m confident that they will do the right thing,” LaMere said. “I think that it’s a chance for them to really prove that we are who we say we are.”
For now, the workers are navigating the busiest shopping weekend of the year. Some have been pulled into shifts at the company’s new pop-up retail location in New York, learning on the fly how to work the floor in addition to their regular responsibilities. It is, in miniature, the dynamic that drove them to organize in the first place: a small team carrying big expectations, building something they believe in, and hoping to share in what they have built. Supporters can sign a petition backing the union’s call for voluntary recognition.
“We don’t believe in replaceable tech,” LaMere said, borrowing a line from a colleague. “We should not believe in replaceable people.”
Reporting Note
This article draws on original reporting, worker interviews, union communications, company disclosures, and journalism covering labor organizing in the tech and e-commerce sectors, including materials from Back Makers United and OPEIU Local 153, alongside reporting from TechCrunch, LeadDev, and labor coverage related to newsroom and platform unions. It also draws on publicly available information on B Corp standards, corporate governance, housing costs in New York City, and comparative labor protections in the United States and France to contextualize workers’ demands and the company’s stated sustainability commitments.
