DARRYL RICHARDSON is proud to make your call. One of nearly 5,800 workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, he says he was the first to call the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) to ask you to organize your co-workers. As a result, since February, officials have been voting through ballot papers. After this is completed on March 29, Bessemer could become a union plant, Amazon’s first in America after a quarter-century of operations.
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The outcome is uncertain, but the campaign is popular: friendly drivers honk as they pass activists waving signs in the spring sunshine outside the Amazon factory. Nearly 10% of American workers today belong to a union, but according to Gallup, a researcher, 65% of Americans approve of unions. They were so loved the last time in 2003. One of the activists calls the battle in Bessemer “David and Goliath” and says the little boy can win.
Stuart Appelbaum, head of RWDSU, says that this vote transcends efforts in a single warehouse. This has attracted national attention – politicians and activists from outside the state for months have flocked to stay on the roads outside the warehouse to show their support. Public understanding of the difficulties faced by frontline workers and essential workers in the pandemic spread sympathy. Appelbaum speculates that the vote may help to shape “the future of work”.
This may be overkill, but other young workers, especially in the technology and retail sectors, are clinging to the competition. Workers at Amazon factories across America, says Appelbaum, have contacted each other to say they can follow Bessemer’s example. And for some African Americans, the campaign is seen as part of a broader effort for better treatment. In Bessemer, the majority of workers are black and about half come from nearby Birmingham, a city with a dark history of mistreatment of workers, including prisoners who used to be hired at low prices to work for private employers.
The vote is taking place at a time that seems exceptionally mature, politically, for the unions. Organized work has an outspoken advocate in the White House. Joe Biden, who started his presidential race for a union hall in Pittsburgh, promised to be “the most pro-union president” of all time. In February, he released a video – scheduled to boost the union effort in Bessemer – saying that “every worker must have a free and fair choice to join a union”.
This week, the Senate confirmed Marty Walsh, a former worker and mayor of Boston, as his secretary of labor, the first time in decades a former union boss has held that position. The Biden administration also supported rural workers’ unions in a case before the Supreme Court this week. The court must decide whether to break a 45-year-old California law that allows unions to organize themselves, uninvitedly, into farmers’ lands. Donald Trump’s government supported two agricultural companies seeking to repeal the law, saying it unjustly punishes companies. Mr. Biden wants to be with him.
The Biden government is also supporting the PRO Act, a union-friendly bill that passed the House this month, after languishing in Congress for more than a year. It has attracted only a handful of Republican supporters and is widely contested by employers, but a survey suggests that 59% of the public favors it. The law would strengthen the powers of the National Labor Relations Council, grant independent workers more organizational rights and weaken the provisions that exist in many states – known as “right to work” laws – that discourage union activity.
The Senate will almost certainly not carry this out. But Biden’s promotion appears to be well judged politically. Doing so helps to keep out Republican leaders who have made pro-union statements. Josh Hawley, a senator from Missouri, declared in November that the Republicans were now a “working-class party”. Marco Rubio, of Florida, said this month that he supports unionization at Amazon because the company has waged a “cultural war against the values of the working class”. (Republicans also dislike Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s billionaire boss, who also owns the Washington Post.) None, however, supports the PRO Act, or the idea of unionization in other companies.
Dan Kaufman, who wrote about the policy of anti-union movements, says that these Republican pro-union comments count as a mere “performative tribute to the working class”. However, even the taxes may have appeal. Mr. Trump managed to get votes from 40% of union families last year. Mr. Biden overcame it, gaining 56% support from union voters. But Biden knows that getting support from the union houses is no longer as easily guaranteed for Democrats as it once was.
Back in Bessemer, the climate is triumphant. Jennifer Bates, one of the union organizers, believes that the union movement has already won a victory regardless of the result of the vote. “We woke up a giant,” she says. ■
This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition titled “The Battle of Bessemer”