{"id":2879,"date":"2021-03-19T01:09:40","date_gmt":"2021-03-19T05:09:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tempestmag.org\/v01_2020\/staging\/?p=2879"},"modified":"2021-03-24T20:25:32","modified_gmt":"2021-03-25T00:25:32","slug":"organizing-amazon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2021\/03\/organizing-amazon\/","title":{"rendered":"Organizing Amazon"},"content":{"rendered":"

W<\/span>e are in a different space now to discuss workplace organizing and the legal rights of workers in the United States. Joe Biden\u2019s public support<\/a> for the right to vote for union representation without management harassment is one part of this difference. The Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act<\/a>\u2014the most ambitious effort at labor law reform in two generations\u2014is another. The PRO Act recently passed the House and it now heads to the Senate. While unlikely to pass as a whole or in parts, it is an extraordinary recognition that workers are screwed in this country and that something needs to change.<\/p>\n

A new day for labor?<\/h4>\n

The $1.9 billion COVID-19 relief bill represents something of a liberal moment with government welfare spending that includes provisions to save worker pensions<\/a> across the country. The largest of the pension funds to be saved is the Teamsters long-suffering Central States Pension Fund which ensures that hundreds of thousands of retired and soon-to-be retired Teamsters avoid devastating cuts. A friend of mine, who should have retired a decade ago, said to me after the bill passed, \u201cI went to work yesterday because I had to. Tomorrow I go to work because I want to.\u201d<\/p>\n

All of this is taking place during the most important organizing drive<\/a> in a generation at the Amazon Fulfillment Center in Bessemer, Alabama. The organizing drive spearheaded by the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU<\/a>) has received international and overwhelmingly supportive media coverage. Can a small union like RWDSU defeat a corporate Goliath like Amazon? We will find out starting on March 30 when ballots are counted by the National Labor Relation Board. While NLRB elections have a terrible win-loss record<\/a> for unions, especially in the South, we should support the campaign wholeheartedly. It would pierce the shield of one of the largest non-union employers in the U.S.<\/p>\n

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Pandemic boom<\/h4>\n

Amazon is such a multi-faceted behemoth of a corporation that it inspires a curious mixture of awe, fear, and amazement. Along with Apple, it shares the distinction of being one of the first two corporations in history to be worth one trillion dollar<\/a>s. As of December 2020, Amazon employed nearly 1.3 million workers around the globe up from 750,000 the year before. The coronavirus pandemic has been good for Amazon with record profits<\/a> and Jeff Bezos recognized as the wealthiest human in the known universe\u2014though he competes for that title regularly with Bill Gates and Elon Musk.<\/p>\n

The pandemic proved to be initially a public relations boon for Amazon. It was a life-line for tens of millions of U.S. residents, especially seniors, stuck at home. James Thomson, a former Amazon manager, declared that Amazon was the \u201cnew Red Cross.\u201d<\/a> Amazon boosted its starting wage from $15 to $17 an hour and hired over 100,000 new workers in the U.S. to cope with the surging demand in the first months of pandemic. It also granted time off to care for workers and their family members ill with COVID-19. The generosity proved short-lived, however, Amazon rescinded<\/a> the two dollar an hour increase at the beginning of last summer.<\/p>\n

The critical role of Amazon in supplying food, personal protective equipment, cleaning supplies, and medicine, led to renewed interest in work conditions, especially for workers in the vast network<\/a> of Amazon Fulfillment Centers or FCs. Deemed \u201cessential workers\u201d by everyone, including former President Donald Trump, some Amazon workers used their new \u201cessential\u201d status to launch job actions. Most notably in New York City<\/a> and Chicago<\/a>, job actions highlighted the dangerous working conditions produced by the pandemic.<\/p>\n

Amazon workers organized a march<\/a> on Jeff Bezos\u2019 Beverly Hills mansion. Petitions and lawsuits<\/a> by Amazon workers for better working conditions were filed throughout the country. It should be noted that Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the federal government agency for workplace health and safety, has been largely absent during the pandemic. The AFL-CIO union federation reported<\/a> that OSHA, from the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020 through October 1, opened a tiny number of investigations compared to thousands of related complaints across industries and regions.<\/p>\n

Amazon responded to the job action in New York by firing worker Chris Smalls claiming he violated social distancing rules. But a leaked memo<\/a> obtained by Vice News<\/em> revealed something else. Amazon General Counsel David Zapolsky tried to smear him in a memo widely circulated through Amazon:<\/p>\n

He\u2019s not smart, or articulate, and to the extent the press wants to focus on us versus him, we will be in a much stronger PR position than simply explaining for the umpteenth time how we\u2019re trying to protect workers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Amazon was clearly worried that the job actions around workplace safety would tarnish its image. In response it poured money into commercials<\/a> that burnished its sagging image. Smalls later founded the Congress of Essential Workers<\/a>. In October, Amazon reported<\/a> that nearly 20,000 of its workers tested positive for COVID-19.<\/p>\n

The pandemic has had a big impact on the political consciousness of U.S. workers from nurses, to meatpackers, to logistics workers. Poverty wages and horrendous working conditions at Amazon have been the subject of exposes before, notably by John Oliver<\/a> and Bernie Sanders<\/a>, However, these perennial issues have to be seen today in new light because of the pandemic and 2020 nationwide uprising against racism.<\/p>\n

Last year, Financial Times<\/em> columnist Rana Foroohar saw in the uprising the potential for a new labor movement. She wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The economic divide is about as stark as it was the last time the country saw this kind of social unrest, in the 1960s during the civil rights movement. But while the marchers then were mainly Black, and the organizers were civil rights leaders from African American communities, today\u2019s Black Lives Matter protests are much more diverse. They are happening in some overwhelmingly white communities\u2014places like Boise, Idaho, and Colorado\u2014as well as in multicultural cities such as New York.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What will the organizing drive in Bessemer, Alabama, tell us about the changing political consciousness of Black workers especially in the logistics industry?<\/p>\n