Bernie Sanders traveled to Birmingham, Alabama, on Friday, to bring together Amazon workers, organizing what could be the first union in the retail giant’s history.
“You are prepared to stand up and say that every worker in this country deserves to have decent wages, decent working conditions, decent benefits and to be treated with dignity, not like a robot,” said the Vermont senator.
Approximately 5,800 workers at the company’s screening facilities in Bessemer, Alabama, are participating in a high-risk vote to determine their association with the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Voting ends on March 29.
“What you are doing requires an enormous amount of courage, and what you are doing is not just for you, your children and your families – what you are doing is for workers across the country,” said Sanders.
A possible union at the country’s second largest retailer, owned by one of the richest men in the world, could mark a turning point for the US workforce, facing a widening wealth gap and the prolonged economic consequences of the coronavirus pandemic. , despite the growing fortune of Amazon and other companies.
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“They know that if you succeed here, it will spread across the country,” said Sanders. “If you get it here, workers across the country will be saying, ‘If these guys in Alabama could face the richest guy in the world, we can do it, too.”
Sanders has repeatedly criticized Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos for his company’s opposition to the union effort.
The senator invited him to testify at a Senate Budget Committee hearing on the state of income inequality in the United States earlier this month. He refused.
“Why – when you have so much money, more money than can be spent in a million lives – why are you spending millions trying to defeat an effort among the workers here?” said Sanders, looking at the historic prospect of unionization within a company owned by one of the richest people in the world in a state with a history full of organized work and a long shadow of slavery and Jim Crow.
The Bessmer facility opened in early 2020, printing an investment of $ 361 million (driven by more than $ 3 million in tax incentives) in Deep South. Its workforce is 80% black.
The workers sought better and safer working conditions, including additional dangerousness clauses and an end to the company’s practice of almost constant surveillance of workers.
During a committee hearing on March 17, Amazon employee Jennifer Bates said that the Alabama facility management pressured employees with “anti-union” messages in toilets, text messages to workers’ phones and during messages individual on the floor screening of the installation.
“Despite all of this, or perhaps because of it, we continue to build support for the union,” she said. “It’s frustrating to know that all we want to do is make Amazon a better place to work, but Amazon is acting like it’s under attack.”
She said the union movement wants to make Amazon “as good a company for workers as it is for shareholders”.
“I’m tired of crying and no one is listening to me,” said union organizer Mike Foster of Alabama on Friday. “I am tired of seeing poverty and only a certain group of people is getting richer and richer. This is not the America I heard about. This is not the dream I heard about. “
Amazon representatives welcomed the company’s criticism, but rejected the company’s characterizations about its working conditions.
Dave Clark, CEO of Amazon’s Worldwide Consumer Operations, was widely ridiculed this week for declaring Amazon the “Bernie Sanders of employers” – the company raised its minimum wage to $ 15 after increasing pressure from Sanders and labor organizers.
Amazon also rejected claims that workers urinated in bottles to meet workplace demands – leaked documents published this week refuted those claims.
The union campaign drew a growing network of high-profile support from labor advocates and politicians who joined the historic campaign – rapper and activist Killer Mike joined Sanders on Friday, a congressional delegation visited workers earlier this month and the President Joe Biden released a video statement for “workers in Alabama” stating that “every worker must have a free and fair choice to join a union”.
More than a dozen Democratic state legislators in Alabama have also signed a letter supporting workers’ union efforts.
“Unions offer workers a powerful vehicle to protect themselves from dangerous conditions of work, exploitation and unfair payment,” says the letter. “We are with Amazon workers in Bessemer, struggling to create a better life for them and for workers everywhere. Your courage is inspiring and your campaign is important: what happens in Alabama affects the entire nation. ”