Stand With Amazon Workers!
The workers of Amazon have started voting in their quest to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, (RWDSU) affiliated with the United Food and Commercial Workers union. Jeff Bezos and Amazon have pulled all stops to coerce their employees to vote against joining the union going so far as to pay Russel Brown head of the union busting firm RWP Labor $3,200 per day plus expenses for his anti-worker skills in preventing the workers to join a union. Not only is Russel Brown head of a union busting firm, but he also heads up the Center for Independent Employees, a nonprofit 501 C 3 company whose mission statement reads; “The mission of the Center for Independent Employees (CIE) is to provide free legal aid to employees who oppose unions in their workplace. CIE is the only organization whose legal team works on the ground alongside America’s independent employees.” Union busting is big business!
Amazon and their union busters have taken extreme measures to intimidate their employees and smear the union. After the union had gotten the required 1,800 signature cards from Amazon employees, Amazon hired thousands more to water down the vote. The NLRB forced the union to collect more signatures…they did. Amazon fought to delate the vote and opposed the union’s demands for mail in voting but due to the pandemic the NLRB rejected Amazon’s appeal. When union supporters stood at the warehouse gates and pro-union workers began pushing for a “yes” vote on the shop floor they hired union busting consultants from notoriously anti-union Morgan Lewis and paid them more than $3,200 per day plus expenses to come up with a plan to thwart the union’s efforts.
While Amazon did everything they could to delay and prevent the union from meeting with employees they were in a huge rush to get them to vote. When voting began on March 1st, Amazon encouraged workers to vote as fast as possible to avoid hearing the union’s proposals. Amazon even went so far as to utilize their employee notification text message system to rush the workers to the poll, put up huge “VOTE” signs throughout the plant and bought billboards along the highway to the warehouse. All to prevent the workers from hearing about the benefits the union would provide.
The anti-union push didn’t stop there, Amazon put out anti-union propaganda in breakrooms and even went so far as to plaster their anti-union notices in the stalls in the bathrooms. They forced workers to attend anti-union meetings where they not only railed against the union but spread lies and misinformation to the workers. Amazon even used their political clout to get the city of Bessemer to change the traffic light patters in front of the warehouse to give union organizers less time to talk to the workers coming to and from their shifts at the red light.
According to a study by the Economic Policy Institute 40% of all union organizing drives result in charges being filed against employers for violating laws that include threatening, firing, disciplining, or retaliating against workers that try to form a union. The report cites DOL documentation that shows companies spending more than $340 million dollars per year on anti-union activities and prevent their workers from joining unions.
Regardless of how the vote at Amazon goes, the unions will not give up. We owe it to the generation that came before us, spilled blood, and lost life for the benefits we have to day to fight on. We also owe it to the next generation to continue fighting for better and safe working conditions, pay and benefits.
In the immortal words of Mother Jones…” Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living.”
