Three factors weigh heavily in any unionization election: the outrageously vicious behavior of employers—some of it illegal, most fully legal—including harassing and intimidating workers, and telling bold lies (which, outside of countries with openly repressive governments, is unique to the United States); the strategies and tactics used in the campaign by the organizers; and the broader social-political context in which the union election is being held.
Blowout in Bessemer: A Postmortem on the Amazon Campaign (The Nation)
[ed. What it was all about:]
Amazon is the second-largest private employer in the US, with 800,000 employees, and it has fiercely resisted attempts at worker organizing. The only other unionization effort to make it to a vote was in 2014, with a small group of repair technicians in Delaware, and it failed after an aggressive anti-union campaign. More recently, the NLRB found that Amazon threatened and fired workers who protested the company’s handling of COVID-19. While the Bessemer effort would only organize a single warehouse, it would show that it can be done. Already, employees at other Amazon facilities have expressed interest in following in BHM1’s footsteps.
“There’s a basic principle of organizing work that success breeds success, and that organizing often happens in self-reinforcing cycles of victory,” said Benjamin Sachs, a professor at Harvard Law School. “Organizing requires workers taking a risk, and the workers are more likely to take a risk when they see that the risk is going to pay off.”
Such a chain reaction could do more than change the conditions that hundreds of thousands of Amazon employees work under. Because of its size and the sprawling geographic scope of its logistics network, the quality and pay of Amazon’s jobs have a powerful effect on the quality and pay of other jobs. Amazon itself has been touting this effect in its ads lobbying for a $15 minimum wage, and indeed, a recent study found that when Amazon raised its starting wage to $15 an hour in 2018, wages at nearby employers also rose.
But when Amazon jobs are compared to similar types of work, they come off much worse. Logistics jobs were historically a path to the middle class, and unionized warehouses typically pay double what Amazon does. When Amazon opens a warehouse, a Bloomberg analysis found, wages at other nearby warehouses often drop. Amazon’s methods for worker tracking and enforcing productivity — aspects of the job that prompted BHM1 to unionize — have also spread across the logistics industry and other sectors as companies attempt to compete with Amazon.
Sachs calls Amazon a bellwether employer, for its outsize role in shaping the labor market and defining the future of work, similar to the role the auto industry played in the early 20th century. “The unionization of that industry, which had a lot to do with labor law reform, was a defining moment for the labor market for decades,” he said.
Why the Amazon union vote is bigger than Amazon (The Verge)
Amazon is the second-largest private employer in the US, with 800,000 employees, and it has fiercely resisted attempts at worker organizing. The only other unionization effort to make it to a vote was in 2014, with a small group of repair technicians in Delaware, and it failed after an aggressive anti-union campaign. More recently, the NLRB found that Amazon threatened and fired workers who protested the company’s handling of COVID-19. While the Bessemer effort would only organize a single warehouse, it would show that it can be done. Already, employees at other Amazon facilities have expressed interest in following in BHM1’s footsteps.
“There’s a basic principle of organizing work that success breeds success, and that organizing often happens in self-reinforcing cycles of victory,” said Benjamin Sachs, a professor at Harvard Law School. “Organizing requires workers taking a risk, and the workers are more likely to take a risk when they see that the risk is going to pay off.”
Such a chain reaction could do more than change the conditions that hundreds of thousands of Amazon employees work under. Because of its size and the sprawling geographic scope of its logistics network, the quality and pay of Amazon’s jobs have a powerful effect on the quality and pay of other jobs. Amazon itself has been touting this effect in its ads lobbying for a $15 minimum wage, and indeed, a recent study found that when Amazon raised its starting wage to $15 an hour in 2018, wages at nearby employers also rose.
But when Amazon jobs are compared to similar types of work, they come off much worse. Logistics jobs were historically a path to the middle class, and unionized warehouses typically pay double what Amazon does. When Amazon opens a warehouse, a Bloomberg analysis found, wages at other nearby warehouses often drop. Amazon’s methods for worker tracking and enforcing productivity — aspects of the job that prompted BHM1 to unionize — have also spread across the logistics industry and other sectors as companies attempt to compete with Amazon.
Sachs calls Amazon a bellwether employer, for its outsize role in shaping the labor market and defining the future of work, similar to the role the auto industry played in the early 20th century. “The unionization of that industry, which had a lot to do with labor law reform, was a defining moment for the labor market for decades,” he said.
Why the Amazon union vote is bigger than Amazon (The Verge)
Image: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty
