>> [NOISE].
>> Wait, people celebrating in this economy, people happy ecstatic.
In fact, something big must have happened and indeed something big did happen.
In what has been called perhaps the biggest win for
organized labor in a generation.
The first ever successful unionization of
an Amazon warehouse has happened in Staten Island.
Amazon down goes to Amazon, I guess to some extent they don't seem to like it.
So let's give you the details.
2,654 warehouse workers voted yes to form a union, while 2,131 voted no.
So, it was closer than I would have expected, closer than I think a reasonable
person would expect considering the conditions and everything.
But it doesn't matter, it succeeded, it passed and they will unionized.
The workers are seeking a $30-an-hour, minimum wage,
better working conditions, including two paid 30-minute breaks,
an hour long paid lunch break along with transparent promotion policies.
But what is so fascinating about this is not just that it happened at all,
that by itself is worthy of recognition, but that it didn't take the normal path.
So there is kind of a loosely defined normal way that you go about unionizing
a workplace.
This was different, it was unconventional.
So convinced that we're going to walk you through the history.
Convinced that Amazon wasn't doing nearly enough to protect workers from covid 19,
whether on personal protection equipment or social distancing, Christian smalls.
At that point, an assistant manager at this warehouse,
let it walk out way back in March 2020, the beginning of the pandemic.
Amazon immediately fired him saying he had violated social distancing rules and
I'm sure that's what they were mad about.
They thought he had just endangered another employee and they felt usurped.
That's their job.
No, it was because he was organizing the workers.
So he formed an independent union, the Amazon labor union,
which you heard them referencing in that video.
Convinced that a new union comprising only Amazon workers was
the smartest way to rally amazon employees behind the union.
In most cases, including in previous attempts to unionize Amazon,
there's been an attempt to join up with another like retail worker union.
This was a totally from the ground up independent effort and
from the very beginning, Amazon was not just opposed to this.
Obviously they're gonna do that, but
take a look at how they tried to take down this effort unionization.
Way back and I remember us reporting on this.
In a leaked memo of a meeting,
Amazon executives including CEO Jeff Bezos himself said.
Smalls was quote, not smart or articulate and sought to create a media narrative
around Smalls to make him the face of the entire union organizing movement.
Now, understand that demographically many of the employees look a lot more like
Smalls, young Black Latino working class in urban than Bzos.
So weirdly enough Bezos is complete detachment from reality,
sort of bit him on the ass.
And maybe they were successful in making Smalls, the face of this movement,
it just didn't have the outcome that they were probably expecting.
Now, we have a lot more on this, but
I do wanna know what both of you think about it.
>> Yeah, it's too bad that I think that,
the Amazon workplace video just didn't include, like more hip young
Black New Yorkers that they could pay to be like, hey, what's up guys?
We don't need a union nah, like that would have done it.
No, of course,
I just love that Bezos thought he could throw money at this problem.
He can't and I love how grassroots this entire effort was.
And I wanna just point out a couple of things, which is that,
this largely went under the radar of a lot of mainstream media outlets, twitter,
just generally like people knew what was happening.
I think organizers obviously we're on the ground knew what was happening.
Bezos now was happening, but it didn't get the attention that Bessemer Alabama and
that vote, which I know we're gonna talk about that,
that got and it was successful.
So it's almost a little bit of sort of a lesson in
maybe kind of a stealth strategy.
When you sort of fly under the radar and
then bam you have actually organized the massive and
the majority of your workforce to say hell yeah, we want a union.
And the main thing is they want a union.
Last thing I'll say Chris Smalls is,
it's so funny when it's people project exactly the opposite of what someone is.
He is incredibly smart, he's incredibly articulate.
He's an incredible leader.
I was watching him speak outside of the warehouse today and he,
you're like this is so galvanizing.
It's just going to spur, in my opinion,
a whole lot of other warehouses to actually organize.
There's nothing more galvanizing than a union win.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah, no I completely agree.
I do think that this will definitely galvanized a lot of people out there and
incentivize them by letting them know this is possible and and it can't happen.
And the force behind having a union is so incredibly powerful and strong,
especially when you're going up against a company like Amazon.
And businesses who are willing to invest everything to keep people disenfranchised.
But what really hit me about what Bezos said about calling Smalls not smart,
not articulate.
It's like those are huge dog whistles for black people.
That's exactly what you're saying.
This thought that even when we are the thought that we're not intelligent,
they thought that we can't formulate words,
also articulate is just probably about the biggest insult ever.
And saying that he's none of these things on top of it.
It's just like you're really showing your cards in terms of who you are,
that you not only are engaging in these racist dog whistles.
But it really speaks to the fact that you probably dehumanize in your viewpoint,
your workers.
And so you don't want them to rally together and fight together.
You just wanna continue to make money off their backs.
And so I think this is a very strong move for
Amazon workers and I hope more people join and form their own unions.
>> Yeah, I think there's a very strong chance of that.
Already, even if it was only this,
it's over 5000 people work at this one warehouse.
This is a very large site to have the unionization and as you're both saying,
this is going to inspire more workers, we can certainly expect that.
But let's also acknowledge like all of the regular Amazon workers that participate in
this, that could be and might still be terrified about the consequences.
We don't know exactly what Amazon is going to do long term.
And any one of these workers could have fear that they could have been summarily
dismissed for organizing, spreading literature, all of that.
And also like in the same way that this is gonna inspire future efforts.
Like take a look at all the people, including in the New York
area that have been successfully unionizing Starbucks locations, honestly,
the people invest in them.
The employees there who gave it their all against an incredible amount of obstacles.
And those who participated in like labor shutdowns and
strikes at things like you had John Deere and Kellogg's and Mett, Coal.
And like there's so many things that have happened over the past year.
And every one of those, whether they were successful or not.
And many of them actually were helped to fight back against a combination of
outright antiunion propaganda.
That has just been the status quo culturally, for
most of these workers longer than they've even been alive.
And then on the other side by so little advocacy, you have some politicians who
have done a good job in supporting either legislation or individual actions.
But for the most part, it's been a steady chipping away at people's faith
in unionization efforts or what a union can actually accomplish for them.
So that there's more obstacles than we could positively imagine.
And so I like that we take a little bit of time to appreciate the success when
it does happen.
>> And I think it's really important to understand, even as votes in,
let's say best summer fail.
It's important to know just how difficult it is to organize a yes vote to
form a union.
It is not easy.
And I think a lot of people watching from the outside in think, that's a no brainer.
Of course, why wouldn't you want a union, you're getting $15 an hour,
if that this is backbreaking work, you get treated like crap.
But there are so many ways and reasons and
not through the propaganda is not easy to evade.
But it's like, look, if you have a union, you won't have a flexible schedule.
If you have a union, you can't work here seasonally.
If you have a, there's all kinds of myths and
lies that a lot of employers invest in.
So it is no small feat to say nothing of the dos.
So scared about dos and all the way.
So I just wanna appreciate a lot of people I've seen online are like,
who the hell would vote against this?
There's a lot of reasons workers think that it is too much for
them in their already sort of over squeezed, sort of over exploited.
Lives with their families work whatever it is.
They're like, maybe a union isn't for me.
And this is proof.
And again, how galvanizing will this be, man, I hope it's wildfire.
>> Yeah, definitely having it pick up.
It's crazy though, that we are a century out above 10 Sinclair's the jungle and yet
we're still fighting the exact same issues.
And it just really shows you how capitalism is something that will always
maintain some kind of hierarchy in our system.
That a lot of people will actually make decisions against their own
best interest out of fear or just because out of lack of education.
And knowing all the efforts that Jeff does was put in to make sure people were kept
ignorant, so that they were kept divided.
It's the same issues every day.
>> Exactly, and I'm glad that you brought that up because I wanna move into a little
bit of what was done to try to stop this from happening.
So first of all, Amazon has some things on their side,
like massive amounts of money, unlimited quantities of money to spend on this.
So for instance, they spent $4.3 million fighting unions just last year.
Now, when you look at what normal companies do,
there was an analysis back in 2020 by the Economic Policy Institute.
They found that,
very few employers had spent more than $1 million in anti union consultants.
And usually that's over the course of several years,
even spending a few $100,000 puts you on the short list of
the most aggressively antiunion, but they spent over $4 million.
So like always like with our defense budget money for some things, but
not money to put into other things.
And some of that money went towards for instance, Global Strategy group which
served as a polling partner for a pro-Biden super pac before 20 twenty's.
That's fun anyway.
Since then they've been working for Amazon producing antiunion materials.
And in many cases, in fact we've showed this on the damage court recently.
Amazon management has been going in and illegally taking down unionization
literature and thankfully being filmed doing so.
This unionization effort has been very savvy and
using social media to spread their message and to show the strike back from Amazon.
But finally I wanna give you Amazon's response to all of this which thus far
is brief.
They put out this statement,
were disappointed with the outcome of the election in Staten Island.
Because we believe having a direct relationship with the company is best for
our employees.
That's what they're worried about.
We're evaluating our options including filing objections based on
the inappropriate and undue influence by the NLRB.
That we and others including the National Retail Federation and
the US Chamber of Commerce witnessed in this election.
They're not mad or sad at all.
They're just worried about undue influence.
>> It wasn't fair and not fair.
We destroyed all of retail in America.
It's not fair.
Yeah, we make people work 16 hour shifts and
they don't take the elevator but our goods do it not fair.
I have to go to Mars it's not fair.
I'm sorry like it's amazing to me.
I love this kind of stuff.
I just wanna say with the consultant group.
You guys should really dig into GSG because they are the most swampy and
I don't like that Trump has stolen this from us.
The swampyest of the swampy consultant groups.
And this is why Democrats haven't seriously taken up a lot of pro union
efforts, Biden's paid a lot of lip service.
I think that's a small nudge in the right direction.
But all these guys, they work for the Biden campaign.
I think Jen Psaki used to work at GSG.
Like, look ever since the 94 neo liberalization of the United States
economy with the Clinton era of let's move to the center and
let's devastate unions, so we can spend, save money by exporting jobs abroad.
It's been a rap for Democrats and being prounion,
they have not put any money where their mouth is.
>> It's just when I think about what we all experienced over the pandemic and
the fact that a lot of people lost their jobs are out of work yet
Amazon shares skyrocketed 87%.
And I think it ended up being like $86 billion Bezos at the end of the day.
It just really speaks to the level of greed.
The fact that these people were out here jeopardizing their lives to make sure that
people across the United States had access to all sorts of goods in their homes.
So that they didn't have to leave them yet.
The response is to keep people even more disenfranchised.
And to be so upset about the fact that people are now empowered and
working together, to ensure that their interests are look out for it.
Just the greed.
It's astronomical, it's ridiculous.
>> 100% and I hope more people can see this dichotomy.
Like there is this growing like lionization of billionaires that I never
understand.
But like the love for for Elon Musk, Bezos doesn't get quite as much of it, but
he tries to look cool in his social media and go into space and everything.
But like like who do you actually think is fighting on your side?
You think Elon Musk really cares about?
It's people like this in the hornet's nest, me interested in it.
But like do you get that we live in a world,
where Bezos could literally be gazing down at our planet from his private spaceship.
Thinking about how entitled these workers are, that's the world we live in,
whose side are you gonna be on?
I know being in space would be cool, but that's not the right answer in this case.