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The Amazon Union Vote Is Ending In Bessemer

March 29, 2021 Luis Feliz Leon, The New Republic. , , ,
The Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, is 885,000 square feet of shiny new construction. Signs painted on the windows in bursts of green, red, yellow greet workers at the main entrance with the words: Work Hard. Have Fun. Make History. Under these slogans, the silhouette of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s face adorns yellow placards reading, The Dream Is Alive. Workers on break outside lean their elbows on their knees or pace around the entrance, the sleeves of their pants rolled up to their kneecaps in the hot sun. It is a March day, the usual balmy 74 degrees. People are too tired to talk shit and wait in silence to return to their shifts, staring at shadows on the pavement or eyeing their phone screens. The facility, called BHM1, opened this time last year, just as the pandemic was bearing down on the United States.

Amazon Workers In Italy To Go On First Strike

March 12, 2021 Rory Sullivan, Independent. , , ,
Amazon’s workforce in Italy will go on its first collective strike later this month, trade unions have confirmed. All 8,500 employees in the country are expected to hold a 24-hour walkout on 22 March after negotiations between their representatives and the online retailer broke down. The three national unions supporting them accused Amazon of showing an “unwillingness to positively address” issues including working hours and results-based bonuses. They also claimed that the online giant was “chronically unavailable” for meetings and was opposed to “a system of fairness”. A spokesperson for the company called the allegations “false”, adding that Amazon had met unions twice in January. The trade unions’ announcement of industrial action comes two months after the US retailer said it would open two more logistics centres in Italy at the cost of 230 million euros (£197m).

Support Keeps Building For #BAmazon Union Drive

March 8, 2021 Martha Grevatt, Workers.org. , , ,
Some three dozen organizations loaned their names to a letter urging President Joe Biden to come out on the side of the Amazon workers fighting for a union. Biden had angered unionists and progressives for publicly taking a “neutral” stance on the representation election taking place now through March 29. Signers included UNITE HERE and Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA) unions, Maine AFL-CIO, the National Employment Law Project and the Working Families Party. Feeling the pressure, on Feb. 28 Biden came out against Amazon’s union busting, affirming the right of every worker to choose union representation. Solidarity has been growing since the Feb. 20 National Day of Solidarity. Renowned actor and activist Danny Glover stood outside the Bessemer facility Feb. 22, holding a sign that read “Remember Mail Your Yes Ballot.”

Don’t Cross This Virtual Picket Line

March 7, 2021 Kris LaGrange, Ucomm Blog. , , ,
Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama have been voting on joining RWDSU for the last month. If they are successful, they would be the first Amazon employees in the United States to join a union. Their campaign has garnered support from across the country. UCOMM previously reported on Teamsters driving from Boston to support the effort. The NFLPA has released a video supporting the organizing effort, actor Danny Glover came down to Bessemer to meet with the workers, and even President Joe Biden has weighed in. Josh Brewer, the lead organizer on the campaign, told the Prospect that many people in the community are extremely supportive of the organizing effort. “Everyone in the community is cheering us on. It’s been that way since we got here. We’ve had local people bring food and chocolate and coffee to the organizers. When I look at the notes that organizers send me, they tell me that workers are telling them, ‘It’s my grandfather I’m hearing from.

Amazon Workers On Why They Need To Unionize

March 4, 2021 Left Voice. , , ,
In the biggest unionizing struggle in Amazon’s history, nearly 6,000 workers at a warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama are voting on whether to join a union. The union drive has met fierce resistance from the company, desperate to stop it. Last month, the union talk radio show The Valley Labor report interviewed union organizing committee members Darryl Richardson, a picker at the fulfillment center, and Jennifer Bates, a Learning Ambassador, about working conditions at Amazon, the union drive, the response from bosses, and why they need a union. The union drive at Bessemer deserves support and solidarity from workers everywhere. If the workers win the union, it would be an inspiration for workers around the world, in addition to the 1.2 million workers currently being exploited by Amazon and Jeff Bezos.

Amazon Workers: ‘Everyone In The Community Is Cheering Us On’

March 3, 2021 Steven Greenhouse, The American Prospect. , , ,
As lead organizer in the potentially historic effort to unionize 5,800 Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, Josh Brewer heads a small army of organizers for the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. Brewer recognizes that it’s a high-stakes campaign—it’s the first time a union has sought to unionize all the workers at an Amazon warehouse in the United States. Bessemer, a suburb of Birmingham, was once a thriving union community, with steel mills, coal mines, and a Pullman railcar factory. Brewer, 33, is an ordained minister who gravitated from the pulpit to union organizing because he saw it as a more effective way to lift struggling Americans. The National Labor Relations Board mailed out the unionization ballots on February 8; they are due on March 29, and only then will the ballots be counted.

It’s Time To Make Large Corporations Pay Living Wages

February 28, 2021 Phil Mattera, DC Report. , , ,
Landing a job in the ’80s with a large corporation was, even for blue-collar workers, a ticket to good wages, generous benefits and a secure retirement. Women and workers of color did not share fully in this bounty, but they generally did better at big firms than small ones. All this began to unravel in the 1980s. Big business used the excuse of global competition to chip away at the living standards of the domestic workforce. Assault on unions, which were key in bringing about job improvements, proliferated. Meatpacking, for instance, what had been high wage and high-density union, turned into a bastion of precarious labor.

February 20: Day Of Action In Solidarity With Alabama Amazon Workers

February 17, 2021 Support Alabama Amazon Workers, Popular Resistance. , , ,
From Mississippi to Connecticut, North Carolina to California, workers, labor and community activists have resoundingly responded to the call for a National Day of Solidarity with Alabama Amazon Workers issued by the Southern Workers Assembly. More than 40 actions (and counting!) are now planned to mobilize solidarity with the workers in Bessemer and to tell Amazon:  Victory to the workers! Union-busting has got to go! The full list of actions can be found below. Amazon is spending tens of thousands of dollars each day on the most vile union busters around - Morgan Lewis - because they know this historic struggle being waged by the workers in Bessemer is inspiring Amazon and other workers to organize on their jobs, and they know that when workers build power, that means less profit for them.

Surveillance, Stress, And No Bathrooms

February 16, 2021 Jake Alimahomed-Wilson, Labor Notes. , , ,
The Amazonification of logistics has created a new group of highly exploited workers: delivery drivers. Amazon itself increasingly relies on an expanding network of subcontracted drivers and independent contractors to deliver packages to customers’ doors. The working conditions facing Amazon’s last-mile drivers are defined by a frantic pace, low wages, and relentless pressure to meet tight delivery deadlines. Workers of color and immigrants are overrepresented, as they are in all the lowest-paying segments of last-mile logistics. When an Amazon Prime member orders an item, the first step in the delivery process begins at an Amazon Fulfillment Center, where the item is picked by a worker and put into a box, and an address label is created.

Striking Workers Halt Construction At Future Amazon Warehouse

February 9, 2021 Lauren Kaori Gurley, Vice. , , , ,
Roughly 75 workers walked off the job on Thursday at the construction site of a future Amazon fulfillment center in southern California—forcing most of the construction operations, including a large crane, to come to a halt.  Workers are striking at the future Amazon fulfillment center in Oxnard, California, because an Amazon contractor at the site, Building Zone Industries, has hired non-union, out-of-state workers to work on the project. This comes amid high rates of unemployment stemming from the COVID-19 in the predominantly agricultural, working-class Latinx community. 

Alabama Amazon Employees Pushing For Union

February 8, 2021 William Thornton, AL.com. , , ,
Looking at employees at Amazon’s fulfillment center on breaks outside the building last summer, Jennifer Bates said the sight reminded her of a football sideline. Employees with bad knees, aching feet, limping around after making the trek around the company’s four-story, 855,000-square-foot center, looking for a few minutes rest before heading back in to resume their shifts. “On our breaks outside, there was a lot of complaining,” Bates remembered. She works as a Blue Badge Learning Ambassador, who prepares and trains employees. “You would hear people talking about mistreatment. They were saying, ‘They need to change.’”

Amazon Is Using AI-Equipped Cameras In Delivery Vans

February 4, 2021 Annie Palmer, CNBC. , ,
Amazon drivers at some U.S. facilities will soon have an extra set of eyes watching them when they hit the road to make their daily deliveries. The company recently began testing AI-equipped cameras in vehicles to monitor contracted delivery drivers while they’re on the job, with the aim of improving safety. Amazon has deployed the cameras in Amazon-branded cargo vans used by a handful of companies that are part of its delivery service partner program, which are largely responsible for last-mile deliveries. The cameras could be rolled out to additional DSPs over time, and Amazon has already distributed an instructional video to DSPs, informing them of how the cameras work.

Amazon Will Pay $61.7 Million To Delivery Drivers After Withholding Tips

February 3, 2021 Johana Bhuiyan, Los Angeles Times. , , ,
Amazon will pay more than $61.7 million to Flex drivers from whom it withheld the full amount of customer tips to settle a Federal Trade Commission investigation. The settlement comes nearly two years after the Los Angeles Times first exposed that Amazon was dipping into customer tips to cover the base pay guaranteed to Flex drivers, who deliver Amazon Fresh, Prime Now and other orders. The money will reimburse Flex drivers whose tips Amazon withheld over the last 2½ years, according to the FTC. Until August 2019, Amazon promised Flex drivers a guaranteed minimum base pay for each order, which the e-commerce company said included 100% of customer tips.

Alabama Workers Fight To Form First US Amazon Union

February 1, 2021 Brandon Stout, Liberation News. , , ,
Some 5,800 workers from an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, will vote in February on whether to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. The workers are upset with algorithms that track productivity as well as unfair disciplinary processes. According to the union drive’s website, “Amazon warehouse workers face outrageous work quotas that have left many with illnesses and lifetime injuries.” Despite the warehouse only opening in March 2020, these conditions have caused the workers to rapidly move toward unionizing. By the end of last summer, the workers met with RWDSU representatives at a hotel to discuss joining the union.

How Amazon Destroys The Intellectual Justifications For Capitalism

December 28, 2020 Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs. , , ,
Amazon doesn't fit comfortably within the free-market fable of how capitalism is supposed to operate. We are, in theory, supposed to get freedom, competition, the reward of innovation, the elimination of all-powerful centralized bureaucracy. But consider this recent Wall Street Journal report on how Amazon destroys its competitors. Essentially, because Amazon is gigantic and has vast sums of money at its disposal, it does not need to “innovate” the same way smaller companies do. It can simply lift the innovations of others, and because it can undercut their prices, it can put them out of business. The Journal cites a number of examples.
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Keep independent media alive. 

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