A number of Amazon workers in Baltimore, New Orleans, Portland, Denver and southern California are seeking unionization, encouraged by their Alabama co-workers. high-level union campaign, Bloomberg reported Friday.
Amazon workers have struggled to organize for years, citing exhaustive workloads, unsafe conditions amid the global pandemic covid-19, dystopian surveillance of the workplaceand the Amazon story of blatant retaliation against those who speak out against this unfair treatment. Now, almost 6,000 employees at an Amazon distribution center in the black-majority city of Bessemer, Alabama, you must vote this month if you want to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.
In an interview with Bloomberg, RWDSU said that 1,000 Amazon workers across the country have already sought to explore their options for potential unions at their own facilities.
“People understand that it is much bigger than Alabama and even bigger than Amazon,” RWDSU Stuart Appelbaum told the channel. “It’s really about the future of work and how workers will be treated.”
Several Amazon workers Bloomberg spoke to began discussing union membership with their coworkers after seeing the success of the Alabama campaign. A warehouse worker in Denver, Colorado, said he created an online chat room for co-workers to discuss the organization. Another warehouse worker in New Orleans, Louisiana, said he made the five-hour trip to Bessemer last month to attend a pro-union rally. He added that the hard work of all of his Alabama co-workers could become a critical point for reform if other Amazon warehouse workers follow his example.
G / O Media can receive a commission
“If the most powerful company in the world can be unionized in an anti-union state like Alabama, it gives hope to people in Louisiana, Mississippi, West Virginia who are trying to do the same thing,” he told the vehicle. “We just have to support the fight wherever it is, because the fight will come to us.”
However, many workers fear retaliation for rigorous efforts to combat unions over the years. The company ran an extensive anti-union campaign in Alabama, running ads Amazon owned twitch, Twitter and other social media platforms, text messaging workers with pro-management messages and running recruitment announcements for anti-union experts. President Joe Biden he even pondered Amazon’s meddling before the Alabama vote, warning the e-commerce giant that its efforts to fight unions must involve “no intimidation, no coercion, no threat, no anti-union propaganda”.
A Pennsylvania warehouse worker told Bloomberg that, with all of this in mind in addition to Amazon’s already overwhelming workloads, it has been difficult to get co-workers stimulated enough to even start union negotiations.
“People are just trying to work and go home,” she said in an interview with the channel. “Amazon makes you very tired, exhausted both physically and mentally, but the benefits are good.”
Alabama’s election is being conducted using postal ballots to be counted on March 30, after which Amazon may see a flurry of union campaigns in its other warehouses and beyond. A recent national survey shared with Gizmodo interviewed hundreds of Amazon delivery drivers based in the United States and Canada and found that most of them supported unionization.
In his interview with Bloomberg, Appelbaum said that even if Amazon workers in Alabama choose not to join a union, “this campaign will result in an explosion of organization across the country.”