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Collaborative Media, Inc., which last week became the first e-commerce company to face a union vote by its workers, said Friday it would release 28 of its 127 employees, or 22 percent of its workforce.
According to company president and chief operating officer Lew Brown, the decision was made two weeks ago and was unrelated to the union effort.
"Due to ongoing pressures from our investors and the generally poor condition of the financial marketplace, we are compelled to accelerate our path to profitability," Brown said.
Brown also noted that the San Francisco, California-based company, which operates Etown.com and ShopAudioVideo.com, plans to shift its focus to business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce and away from consumer e-tailing.
Bad Timing
Union representatives questioned the company's motives and the timing of the staff cuts.
"We find this highly suspicious," said Bill Wyland, organizer for the Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America, which is assisting Etown employees with their union effort.
"We're going to investigate this to the fullest extent of the law," including filing charges with the National Labor Relations Board, Wyland told the E-Commerce Times.
The union has already filed charges over the firings of four workers that were behind the union drive.
Forward Drive
"We're going to pursue with the election whether they reduce the size [of the company] to five people," Wyland said. In fact, the company's actions might invigorate the remaining employees and help the union effort, he said.
Nearly half of workers slashed -- 13 of the 28 job cuts -- were in
Collaborative Media's customer 
service department, the division
behind the unionization push. Workers were
let go "based solely" on length of time with the company, with the newest
workers fired first, Brown said.
Closed Doors
On November 27th, the Newspaper Guild-Communications Workers of America filed a petition with the NLRB seeking an election, after getting approval from about 70 percent of the 36 customer service representatives at Etown and ShopAudioVideo.com.
The company said Friday it closed the ShopAudioVideo.com division, resulting in the layoffs of five workers.
The workers said they were looking for better pay, more job stability and clearer definition of their responsibilities, among other things.
"In order to fulfill our long-term vision for Etown, we need to sharpen our focus on our core businesses of creating and licensing consumer electronics content and scale down our costly consumer operations," said Brown.
Brown also said those behind the union effort are "misrepresenting" conditions at the company, saying some disgruntled former workers "are instigating current employees."
Union Struggles
In a separate union drive, employees at e-tail giant Amazon.com are also gathering signatures for a union petition, hoping to use the busy holiday season to gain publicity and build support for their cause.
The union efforts, however, come at a hard time for
e-commerce companies, with many struggling to raise
cash and keep up with expenses as the industry
endures a shakeout.
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