At this point my recommandation is working toward amending the WA law regulating cooperatives

 The REI-COOP reality is that since 1982 the REI-BOARD of directors has taken over the institution by concentrating all the power with the board of directors and effectively denying any to the membership. The history and "justification" of this take over is best described by Andy Ryan in his 2003 article, titled Who owns REI?

Since 1982, there has been, that I know, no effective organized resistance and opposition to the diktats of the self perpetuating Board of Directors except for the 2025 voters/withhold campaign masterminded by the REI unions that led to the defeat of the 3 candidates selected by the board. 

The board quickly recovered from this "disapointment" by amending the bylaws to dispense  the coopted new board members to face an election by the membership (in violation of the coop statutes and the WA law?). 

They also made a deal with the so naive unions so that they agree not to "weigh in" the next election in 2026 in exchange for starting bargaining in good faith, as if it was a serious possibility with an autocratic board of directors, fundamentally anti-union and decided to avoid any new electoral defeat.  So as soon as their candidates "won" the2026  election (although no detailed results were published) they ended the bargaining.

It should be clear that the only durable way for the unions and frustrated members to break the autocratic hold of the Board of Directors is to take the board over by systematically defeating their selected candidates to the board and by pushing the WA legislature to amend the law governing cooperatives so that the voting rights of the membership are protected by the law for any attempts by the board to restrict them. 

At the present I am not sure those rights are effectively protected from an autocratic board like the present one at REI that did just bypassed the election requirement for the 3 members they coopted in september 2025 after their defeat at the May 2025 election.

The rogue behaviour of the REI Board that tweaked the bylaws to bypass the requirement of an election for all board members and the lack of reaction to correct this attack of the voting rights of the members are ample proof that the WA law needs to be amended to protect those unalienable rights and make sure that take over of cooperatives by autocratic boards are made impossible.

There are a few other issues related to the governance that should be added within an amendment process, like the obligation for the board to publish a detailed annual report, presented/submitted to the membership for approval during an annual general meeting, as well as the obligation to publish the detailed results of the annual election and the real possibility for members to be candidates without having been selected and approved by the board.

Such an amending process of the existing law will require mobilizing legislators but the unions should be able to do it considering the autocratic behaviour of the REI board.

Reading Good jobs first about corporate misconduct, I searched their violation tracker database for REI listing the penalties they had to pay. In 2020 they paid $5 million for wage and hour violations...