Amazon workers can be a breakthrough in a company that has done everything it can to run organized work. Nearly 6,000 employees in Bessemer, Alabama, distribution center will soon be able to vote whether to join a union; shipping notes must be sent by March 29, and the National Council for Labor Relations will count the next day.
Someone, however, is not happy with the organizational efforts.
AN person or entity made a cartoon anti-union website, Doitwithoutdues.com. “HEY BHM1 DOERS, why pay almost $ 500 in debt?”, He says, of a photo of a deposit clerk making a thumbs up. (BHM1 is the name of the Bessemer deposit.) “We protect you * with high salaries, health care, vision and dental benefits, as well as a safety committee and an appeals process. There is so much MORE you can do for your career and your family without paying debt. “
Amid cheerful decorations – a package from Amazon with hearts and a GIF of a corgi spinning a disc – the site erroneously claims that workers will be trapped paying debts. (This is not true: NThe site offers a portal for workers to return the cards they would have signed to run for election in the National Council for Labor Relations.
At the bottom, the site displays an Amazon logo. In an email, an Amazon spokesman did not confirm or deny that the site is affiliated with the company.
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The BHM1 warehouse Open at the beginning of the pandemic, when Amazon entered a hiring frenzy. The pandemic has also correlated with a national wave of workers’ organization, including protests against unsafe conditions and fair payment; meanwhile, increased public scrutiny and increased demand gave them a little more advantage. Amazon workers have struggled to organize for years, and Amazon faced them with anti-union advertising and surveillance, as dismissal. (While it is illegal to fire a worker to organize, Amazon workers in Alabama can be fired at any time for any reason without a union.)
If workers vote for unionization, they will be represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). The RWDSU declined to comment, but has already supported Whole Foods employees‘attempt to unionize and represent a Staten Island warehouse worker who He was fired after speaking for better working conditions.
In an emailed statement to Gizmodo, Amazon did not say that it is anti-union per se, but that “we do not believe that RDWSU represents the majority of the opinions of our employees”. It is unclear where RDWSU’s “visions” differ from those of employees, but Amazon said it offers “some of the best jobs available everywhere we hire”.
This may still be true, but workers may also want things like job stability and a grievance procedure so they don’t have to choose their amazing jobs over things like going to the bathroom. Workers can also bargain for the hazard pay, which the company granted and then revoked few months after the start of the pandemic. (In October, before the worst winter wave, The company said almost 20,000 workers have hired covid-19.) Adding to the years of reporting brutally long shifts under surveillance, recent reports revealed oppressor quotes injuries in the company’s warehouses.
Amazon, the New York Times has pointed out, did not come so close to a union since 2014, when the vast majority of 27 technical workers voted against unionization. A representative of the International Association of Engineers and Aerospace Workers then said that workers “faced intense pressure from anti-union managers and consultants”.