Jeff Bezos made $11.5 million
every hour of the pandemic,
and yet — he shared almost none of it
with warehouse workers.
It ain't fair to us,
working like we working
and got him in his position he in.
And he don't care about us and want to pay us.
Now, Amazon workers in Alabama
are voting to form the first union
in the company’s U.S. history.
I want people to understand that
the packages that you get —
it’s on our backs.
This is a distinctly Black-led struggle
for labor rights
inspired in part by the movement for Black lives.
Workers here describe conditions
as something out of a dystopian nightmare.
And while the gap between Bezos’ wealth
and his employees' earnings
has reached obscene levels,
not everyone
is behind the union push.
If performing at a certain level
is too much physically
or too much mentally for somebody,
then maybe this isn't the place for them.
If these workers succeed,
it could mark a turning point in the history
of organized labor in the U.S.
and send shockwaves
through warehouses across the country.
We’re in Bessemer, Alabama,
to follow this epic battle for organized labor.
Amazon reaped mind-boggling profits
during the pandemic,
and Jeff Bezos’ personal wealth
grew by about $70 billion.
So, even if he gave
every U.S. Amazon employee
a one-time $100,000 bonus,
he’d still be nearly as rich
as he was before the crisis.
Instead, he stripped workers
like Jennifer Bates
of the $2-an-hour hazard bonus
they received near the start of the pandemic.
You see the shoes here.
I’ve gone through 'em all.
None of them work,
doing all that walking at Amazon.
As Jennifer gets ready
for a 10-hour shift at Amazon,
she worries about the toll it will take on her body.
I hope my legs don’t start hurting,
you know.
So that’s really what’s going through my mind.
Jennifer says the physical requirements
of the job are grueling and unsustainable.
She’s been to the doctor for tests
because her legs and ankles are swelling.
Your body is taking a hit.
Once you get off [work],
it’s so excruciating walking out.
Some workers told AJ+
they have to walk for miles
during a shift and can't sit down
except during official breaks.
For Jennifer,
it’s become so difficult
that she wonders how she'll make it
through the day.
I have 10 hours.
And what goes on in my mind is,
I try to convince myself
that everything's going to be OK today.
And Jennifer says she’s not alone.
It’s amazing because as I sit in my car,
I literally see people walking and limping.
Now, Jennifer and other workers
are taking on
one of the most powerful companies
on the planet
with a vote later this month
on whether to unionize.
And they’ve faced an avalanche
of union busting in response.
Workers say they’ve been spammed
by anti-union text messages and emails
and are subjected to “Vote No” messaging
along the walls
and even bathrooms of the warehouse.
Jefferson County even changed traffic signals
outside the warehouse at Amazon’s request.
The union says it was to
undermine canvassing efforts.
It’s been so bad
that members of Congress sent a letter
to Jeff Bezos
imploring him to
“stop these strong-arm tactics immediately.”
Amazon is afraid of the power of the people —
that now we’ll have a voice
and we’ll be able to stand up.
What they’re afraid of now is
that when the union comes in,
now we’re being forced to make you sit down
and talk to us.
Amazon rejected our request
to film inside the warehouse,
but we pieced together clips from social media
and personal accounts
to give you an idea of what life inside
is actually like.
It looks something like this:
Your job is a picker at the warehouse.
You have to pull products from shelves
powered by robots.
These are called pods.
A computer tracks how fast you work.
It’s called “making rate.”
Want to stretch or take a few sips of water?
That’s going to eat up precious time.
Need to get on a stepladder to reach a product?
That’s also going to cost you.
You get a warning.
For Darryl, a picker at Amazon’s warehouse,
it’s that frantic push
to be robotically efficient
that chips away at his personal dignity.
He works 10- to 12-hour shifts
and worries about taking too long
for a bathroom break.
Warehouse workers get two
30-minute breaks per shift.
But outside of that,
workers are being monitored
any time they’re not performing their job.
It’s called TOT, or Time Off Task.
Picture this:
You’ve been standing for four hours.
It’s time for a mandatory break.
You have 30 minutes to walk an area
the size of 14 football fields
to get to the break room.
There’s no time to heat up food.
Something from the vending machine
will have to do.
You finish up,
head to the bathroom
and make it back to your station
10 minutes late.
You get a text message.
You’ve racked up TOT.
Report to HR.
You’re going to fire me
for going to the bathroom
if I got too much TOT time?
Come on, now!
This life!
Going to the bathroom.
Mother nature called!
Amazon has said its workers
don’t need to unionize —
talking up its competitive benefits
and starting pay of $15.30 an hour.
That’s more than double the state’s
minimum wage of $7.25.
Darryl says it’s not a livable wage
and that they deserve more
for what they’re contributing to the company.
If I was to see [Jeff Bezos] right now,
what I would ask him?
You just do what we do for a month.
'Cause I want to see how long would he last.
It ain't fair to us,
working like we working.
And got him in his position he in,
and he don't care about us and want to pay us.
[Radio] - Next week, Amazon will face
its first unionization vote in the country
in seven years in Bessemer, Alabama.
At its heart,
this is a fight for fair labor
that's taken root in a place
that epitomizes the struggle for racial justice.
My great-grandparents lived here
years ago in Bessemer
And if you drive around, you can see
that it's a struggling area.
This is a union effort being led
by an overwhelmingly Black workforce
in a town where a quarter of the people
live in poverty.
It’s not the fact that you’re coming here
to bring economic growth.
But you’re coming here to get cheap labor
because they’re easily to accept
the smaller pay
and don’t think that they deserve
to get compensated for their hard work.
Labor organizing has a really deep
history in Alabama,
and the Bessemer area
was once a center for unionization.
In the 1930s, Black and white workers
joined together to push for progressive labor laws
against their employer, U.S. Steel.
The Amazon warehouse that Darryl and Jennifer
are pushing to unionize?
It sits on land once owned
by that steel company.
And it was this kind of radical
interracial union work
that would lay the foundation
for the civil rights movement in Birmingham.
One of the really distinctive things
about this campaign
is that it’s being led by the
Amazon workers themselves
and workers from nearby poultry plants.
On the day we visited, Randy Hadley —
president of the union
that’s helping Jennifer and Darryl —
stood outside for hours
to encourage people to vote.
Amazon’s not hiring these people so they can say,
“Hey, you have a great future.”
Now they’ll lie and tell them that.
Amazon, they work these people so hard.
They treat them like a machine.
So when that machine breaks down,
they just throw them out
and get another machine.
One analysis found
the turnover rate at Amazon among
frontline workers was between
double and triple the industry average.
We requested an interview
with an Amazon spokesperson for this story.
They did not make one available to us.
Hi. - Hey, Miss Angie.
- How's it going?
Instead we spoke with Dawn Hoag,
a processing assistant,
who defended the company’s work conditions.
Being forced to stand for long hours,
not enough time for bathroom breaks,
being pushed to the limit,
to perform a certain number of actions per minute.
I mean, do you see any validity
in these concerns from your co-workers?
It's not for everybody.
So, if performing at a certain level
is too much physically
or too much mentally for somebody,
then maybe this isn't the place for them.
Dawn started at Amazon as a packer,
but her current position does not require
that she make rate.
So it doesn't really sound like you can sympathize
with a lot of the concerns that people have
for why they're choosing to unionize
or want to unionize.
I would say I don't sympathize with them,
but I empathize.
I understand what they're saying
and I understand their feelings.
But, um, I mean,
it's been that way from day one.
You can't come into a situation
that doesn't work for you
and then get into it
and then expect it to change just for you.
The significance of this moment
as a progression of Alabama’s
anti-racist organizing
is not lost on Darryl.
He got killed
for trying to make things right,
trying to make everybody come together.
And that’s me.
I want everybody to get treated fair.
I want everybody to get paid for what they deserve.
I want everybody to have an opportunity.
Past efforts to organize have failed,
but there is a palpable sense of
hope and optimism
that this time will be different.
I think we're going to win.
And I'm always have that faith until that day.
So I can't do nothing but have faith
and praying that we do.