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Workers At Amazon And Google Condemn ‘Project Nimbus’

October 14, 2021 Left Voice. , , ,
Google and Amazon workers have published a public letter calling on the two companies to cancel Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract for cloud computing services for the Israeli military and government. We know that the Israeli military apparatus will use these services to build weapons and surveillance technology to use against the Palestinian people. Such technology, once tested on Palestinians, is frequently exported back to the United States to be used against marginalized populations and protesters here. This public action by tech workers follows an increasing number of coordinated actions in the tech sector to pressure Big Tech companies to cancel government contracts for surveillance technology, censorship technology, and computing services for foreign states.

Alabama Amazon Workers May Get Another Crack At A Union

September 25, 2021 Hamilton Nolan, In These Times. , , ,
Bessemer, AL — Here is what a 1920s city looks like in a 2020s world. Along Bessemer’s broad downtown streets sit an array of small shops that have somehow managed to survive into the age of big box retailers: the rug store, the dusty furniture store, the store that sells sewing machines. They sit alongside empty, peeling husks of all the stores that didn’t make it. On one prime downtown corner a block from the courthouse, you can peer through the window of an abandoned pharmacy to see a four-foot plant growing up through the floor. The old railroad still runs through Bessemer, but most everything else has been sucked out by modern commerce. The town is emblematic of many that have seen their small business districts destroyed, first by Walmart and its imitators, more recently by Amazon.

Amazon’s ‘Factory Towns’ Will Be Satanic Mills For The Working Class

September 20, 2021 Dr. Lisa Mckenzie, RT. , , ,
Amazon and its hyper-neoliberal cheerleaders are polishing turds again. Jeff Bezos, the billionaire spaceman, and his company are about to ‘lift the working class’ by creating new ‘factory towns,’ Bloomberg writes. “Plentiful new jobs at higher wages in places with cheaper housing sounds like a solution to inequality,” investment adviser Conor Sen wrote in a piece for the news agency. Bloomberg and Amazon are putting such a shine on this idea, it reminds me of those Victorian texts where the working class living on the master’s land would bow and doff their caps every time his carriage passed them on their way to a 14-hour shift in his mine or mill. Old books are full of those cheery commoners thanking landlords and industrialists for allowing them to live and work in poverty. Have we really come full circle?

Canadian Amazon Warehouse Could Be First To Unionize In North America

September 19, 2021 Candice Bernd, Truthout. , , ,
The struggle to unionize Amazon is shifting to Canada, where workers in Alberta could soon be the first to unionize an Amazon warehouse in North America. Workers at the “YEG1” facility in Nisku, Alberta, just outside Edmonton, filed for a union election on Monday, September 13. The election could be held in mere weeks, once the Alberta Labour Relations Board approves the application. Workers at the relatively new facility in Nisku, which employs between 600 to 800 Amazon “associates,” have described rampant favoritism and discrimination against marginalized workers of color and immigrants. Job security, the pace of work and wages are also among Nisku workers’ top concerns, according to Christopher Monette, director of public affairs at Teamsters Canada.

Amazon And The Destruction Of Competition And Livelihoods

September 5, 2021 Colin Todhunter, Counter Punch. , ,
Global corporations are colonising India’s retail space through e-commerce and destroying small-scale physical retail and millions of livelihoods. Walmart entered into India in 2016 with a US$3.3 billion take-over of the online retail start-up Jet.com. This was followed in 2018 with a US$16 billion take-over of India’s largest online retail platform, Flipkart. Today, Walmart and Amazon control almost two thirds of India’s digital retail sector.

Amazon? There Has To Be A Better Way

August 14, 2021 Wade Rathke, Stansbury Forum. , , ,
This is an old problem, not a new one, but somehow, we continue to try the same things over and over again, no matter how poorly they are working.  This new problem may be Amazon since they have now grown to more than one million workers and rising globally.  In the USA, Amazon is the second largest private sector employer behind Wal-Mart, but Wal-Mart is a prime example of the old problem.  The old problem, simply put, is that unions have not successfully organized a single mass employer with more than 100,000 workers in the US in the last fifty years.  Or, 50,000 workers.  Or, 30,000 workers. Think about any of the tech conglomerates.  Think about any of the massive fast-food chains from McDonalds or Starbucks on down.  

Amazon Interfered With Election; Workers May Have A Second Chance

August 5, 2021 Mike Spector, Reuters. , ,
E-commerce giant Amazon.com Inc (AMZN.O) interfered with a union election by installing a mailbox to collect ballots and by distributing paraphernalia encouraging employees to vote against organizing, according to a report by a U.S. National Labor Relations Board hearing officer. The NLRB official on Monday recommended a rerun of the landmark Amazon union election in Alabama where employees overwhelmingly voted against making their warehouse the online retailer's first to organize in the United States. In the coming weeks, a regional director for the NLRB will decide whether to order the rerun based on the recommendation, said an official on Monday with the board, who asked not to be named.

Polish Amazon Workers Are Organizing

July 27, 2021 Alex N. Press, Jacobin. , , ,
Although Amazon is based in the United States, its workforce now extends around the world. This has been used by the company to suppress wages and increase productivity through greater competition. But there are efforts to counter that strategy, with some workers across Europe building connections and the capacity to organize together. It is still an uphill battle as Amazon creates individual contracts for its locations, doing its best to pit workers against one another not only from country to country, but from warehouse to warehouse. Yet the efforts remain, pointing toward possibilities for the future of international organizing. In a recent episode of Jacobin’s new podcast, Primer, Alex N. Press spoke with two workers from Poland who organize with Amazon Workers International (AWI): Magda Malinovska and Agnieszka Mroz.

Animal Extinction Protesters Blockade McDonalds Factory

July 17, 2021 Charlene Rodrigues, The Independent. , , ,
Animal Rebellion protesters have barricaded a McDonald's factory in Scunthorpe in a move to get the burger chain to switch to an entirely "plant-based food menu by 2025." The ‘animal and climate justice’ movement said that around 100 protestors set up a blockade using trucks, tents, bamboo structures in the early hours of Thursday morning to stop the facility from distributing burgers. Trucks with the sign “McMurder” stood outside the factory while police vans encircled the area. The campaigners, urging others to join in, said they will stay as long as it takes until McDonald’s commits to changing towards a plant-based menu. Accusing the global fast-food chain of poor labour conditions and wreaking havoc on the environment, the activists said that they would end the blockade if McDonald’s makes the first step towards this goal by committing to becoming 20 per cent plant-based within one year.

Chicago Amazon Workers Help Win Megacycle Pay Nationwide

June 22, 2021 Joe DeManuelle-Hall, Labor Notes. , ,
In January, the company hit workers in Chicago’s DCH1 delivery station with a devastating one-two punch. First, Amazon was shutting down their workplace, so they would have to transfer to other facilities across the city. Second, workers at delivery stations nationwide were going to be forced onto a new shift called the “Megacycle,” where they would work four times a week from 1:20 to 11:50 a.m. Delivery stations facilitate the “last mile” of delivery, sorting and handing off packages to delivery drivers. The Megacycle is designed to speed up the delivery process, allowing customers to order even later and still get their packages within one to two days. DCH1 had been the base of the Chicago chapter of Amazonians United—the first chapter in the country. This network of worker committees at Amazon warehouses now reaches across the U.S., with ties with similar groups in other countries.

Hiding The Union Busters

June 10, 2021 Julia Rock, The Daily Poster. , , ,
When Amazon busted a union drive at its Bessemer, Ala., warehouse earlier this year, it ran a sophisticated campaign which involved sending text messages and mailers to employees warning them of the downfalls of a union, offering bonuses to employees who quit before the union election, and even allegedly accessing the dropbox that employees used to mail their ballots. But the size and scope of Amazon’s efforts — and who was coordinating them — wasn’t fully visible to the public or to employees partaking in the election, because the Trump administration scrapped a rule that would have required disclosure of certain union-busting expenditures by corporations. The so-called “persuader” rule was designed to spotlight an industry that rakes in nearly $340 million a year advising corporations on how to prevent their employees from unionizing.

Amazon Is Inundating Workers With Anti-Union Messages

June 6, 2021 Jordan Chariton, Status Coup. , , ,
New York City - On the heels of Amazon’s scorched earth, and likely illegal, union-busting campaign in Bessemer, Alabama that defeated workers’ attempt to unionize, Status Coup has obtained photos from inside Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse, known as JFK8, that show the company’s aggressive union-busting in the face of efforts by current and former workers trying to form a union. The union drive organizers, who have formed Amazon Labor Union [ALU], recently filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board after Amazon erected a chain-link fence around the warehouse parking lot in order to force the ALU organizers to a location with less foot traffic–seemingly to prevent them from getting workers to sign a union card. At one point, the fence had a “Beware of Dog” sign up (not clear what dogs folks needed to be aware of).

Outside Amazon Fulfillment Center, Workers Demand Tax Fairness

June 4, 2021 Michael Moore, Workday Minnesota. , , ,
Minnesota workers unfurled a “Tax the Rich” banner outside Amazon’s MSP1 fulfillment center here today. It was a not-so-subtle suggestion to state lawmakers about how they might pay for investments in child care, paid family leave, education, infrastructure and other supports for working families. Tyler Hamilton, in his fourth year working at MSP1, said he and others inside the facility could use a little support right now. “Honestly, I’m tired,” the Maplewood resident said during a press conference organized by local unions. “And I’m not just tired from working night shift, even though I’m a night-shift guy. “I’m tired from working in this building behind me for over a year during the coronavirus pandemic and having to deal with all the stupid stuff Amazon does all the time – and they get away with.”

Staten Island Amazon Workers Begin Union Drive

April 26, 2021 Candice Bernd, Truthout. , , ,
In some ways, Amazon workers’ more than yearlong struggle for adequate COVID-19 protections and against corporate retaliation at the company’s Staten Island facility in New York City helped pave the way for this month’s unionization attempt at the Bessemer, Alabama, warehouse. Now, as the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU) seeks a second election through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), filing official objections Friday charging Amazon with engaging in illegal interference to defeat the union, Staten Island “JFK8” warehouse workers with The Congress of Essential Workers (TCOEW) tell Truthout they aren’t deterred by the outcome. Rather, their on-the-ground experiences in Alabama, where the unionization effort gained national attention but ultimately failed...

Worker Centers: Where Causes Cohere, And Forge Power

April 22, 2021 Sarah Jaffe, The American Prospect. , , ,
In October 2020, on what Amazon calls “Prime Day,” Fadumo Mohamed and her co-workers at an Amazon fulfillment center outside Minneapolis stood in the whipping wind alongside a handmade banner that read “Amazon: Hear Our Voice.” As the wind howled, Mohamed, bundled in hijab, a face mask, a long black skirt, and track jacket, approached a microphone and shouted to be heard over the storm, “We are human, we are not robots! We have to speak up! We have a voice! We are risking our health!” In February, Mohamed’s two-and-a-half-year-old son took sick, and she had to take him to the hospital for emergency surgery. She’s a single mother, an immigrant with no family in the area—so caring for her son was all on her.
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