Biden avoids endorsing union efforts in Alabama Amazon Warehouse

President Joe Biden considers himself a union leader “from the belt buckle to the sole of the shoe, ”As he likes to say. In his campaign lectures and policy proposals, Biden made it clear that he believes that all American workers would be better off if more of them had union cards. And some of the first actions he took in office supported unions and collective bargaining.

But with Amazon workers in a warehouse in Alabama now voting in the most important union election of the years, the White House has avoided endorsing union membership there. The relative silence of the government has not gone unnoticed at the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), which hopes to represent workers at the retail giant’s call center in Bessemer, Alabama.

“I think it is important for the government to demonstrate its support for unionization during this campaign,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the president of RWDSU, in an interview with HuffPost. “This is the biggest campaign in many years and it is a great opportunity for the government to show workers what is important to them.”

Amazon has no unionized deposits in the U.S. and would like to keep it that way. The company launched an aggressive counterattack campaign to dissuade the nearly 6,000 workers from joining RWDSU in a seven-week postal election. Amazon’s anti-union message goes on to workers in the bathrooms, where posters encourage them to vote “no”.

The retailer’s captive audience meetings and anti-union literature have drawn criticism from Democrats in the House and Senate, as well as some indirect criticism from the White House. Biden tweeted in early February, that the policy of the United States government is to encourage collective bargaining and that employers must ensure that workers havea free and fair choice to join a union. ”

He did not call Amazon by name, however.

“This is the opportunity to invest in the land,” said Erica Iheme, a native of Birmingham and southern director of Jobs to Move America, a group working to improve the quality of jobs in Alabama. “He can say, ‘This is the position of our administration'”.

Reuters reported earlier this month, union leaders tried to secure support from White House officials for the effort.

A tweet in support of the president may not influence any vote among workers. But it could alert a company like Amazon about possible retaliation and make a strong statement about the government’s values. It would also set a new benchmark for a Democratic president when it comes to publicly supporting unions that often seem taken for granted in the Democratic Party.

The Barack Obama era has also seen major union elections, but the former president has characteristically remained above the fray. Obama did not publicly endorse United Auto Workers’ failed effort to unionize a complete Volkswagen plant in Tennessee in 2014. This was the most watched election in years, due to the fact that Volkswagen is a foreign automaker in the south.

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There are understandable reasons why even a friendly president is left out. A president’s support may not help, and a government may not want to be seen as guilty of the scales. The National Labor Relations Board, an independent agency to which the president makes appointments, oversees private sector union elections. The council may end up having to decide if someone broke the law in the election of the Amazon, or even order a reformulation.

But Joseph Geevarghese, the executive director of Our Revolution, a progressive group that grew out of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) 2016’s presidential race, argued that Biden has a responsibility to directly condemn Amazon’s anti-union efforts. He said this would send an important symbolic statement, just as Ronald Reagan’s dismissal of air traffic controllers meant “union hunt season”.

“The truth is that this is bigger than Amazon”, Geevarghese said.

Jeff Hauser, director of the executive watchdog group Revolving Door Project, said the government is dealing with a huge economic and public health crisis, but must still find time to censor Amazon’s anti-union tactics.

“A president affirmatively committed to the labor movement can and must also urge Amazon to stop undermining worker democracy,” said Hauser. Even if that support ultimately fails to move the needle, he said, “the ties between the workers and the president would not be weakened, but strengthened.”

Any concerns that Biden may have about entering a union election did not stop some prominent Republican politicians before him. During the UAW campaign at Volkswagen, former Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) guaranteed more work at the factory if workers rejected the union. Tennessee’s then-governor Bill Haslam also urged workers to turn down the union, saying it would force the company to abandon expansion plans.

Asked what was preventing Biden from expressly endorsing the union campaign in the Amazon, a White House spokesman reiterated the president’s general position, saying he encourages union organization and collective bargaining, and urges employers not to campaign. anti-union. Biden called for increased penalties for companies that illegally violate unions, among other significant reforms of labor law.

Biden may have raised the expectations of progressives with his own pro-union actions to date as president. In an unprecedented move on inauguration day, Biden sacked Peter Robb, the Trump-appointed general counsel of the NRLB, whom labor groups considered vehemently anti-union. In place of Robb, he appointed Jennifer Abruzzo, a lawyer for Communications Workers of America, attracting praise from the unions.

The anti-union tactics that Amazon has implemented are quite common among employers in the United States. Many union supporters would like to see more politicians discourage and shame these practices through the attacking pulpit.

Earlier this month, a group of 13 Democratic senators, led by Sens. Sherrod Brown (Ohio) and Cory Booker (NJ), urged Amazon to “follow the law” and called the company’s efforts to persuade “shameful. ”Fifty House Democrats, led by Representative Andy Levin (Michigan), sent a similar letter to the company.

Appelbaum of RWDSU said he was satisfied with the number of signatories in these letters, but acknowledged that it would be good to have more names attached.

“I would say to anyone who is a Democrat who has not signed, they have to think about signing now or reconsider why they call themselves a Democrat,” he said.