To the first union in American history.
Unions are having a moment.
Despite decades of declining membership and
plenty of failed attempts, the last few months have
seen a flurry of decisive victories, with first ever
unions forming at some of the country's biggest
companies, including Amazon.
In April, workers at one Staten Island warehouse
officially voted in a grassroots union called the
Amazon Labor Union, or ALU, making it Amazon's first
union in the U.S.
And Amazon is far from alone.
The first Starbucks to form a union at a
company-operated store ever in America.
Now this is the first major effort at an Apple store.
Workers continue to push back against employers in
all sectors, fighting for better conditions, pay and
benefits. Now Google employees are asking if
their pay will be scaled up to match inflation.
These movements are gaining traction amid what labor
experts call a perfect storm: four decades of
stagnant wages, a pandemic that's brought record
profits for companies and frustration for workers,
lots of jobs, not enough applicants, and a pro-union
administration.
By the way, Amazon, here we come.
But amid the great resignation in labor
shortage, critics say workers have power whether
or not they unionize.
My message to these workers is, if you're not happy with
a job, there's 11.3 million vacancies out there.
Some of them are for you.
But the win at Amazon was unusual because the ALU
isn't part of a big, powerful union, but a brand
new one created by Amazon employee Derrick Palmer and
fired worker Chris Smalls.
The way we organized was completely unprecedented,
nontraditional. We had to negotiate it ourselves.
As workers, we know the ins and outs of the company
best.
But now that Amazon has a union, it's a long, tough
road to a contract before workers will see change.
The real work is definitely beginning now.
We're in court as we speak.
We have to get this company to come to the table for
negotiation, which we know they do not want to do.
We talked with workers at the center of the movement
to get an inside look at how the ALU won and asked
what's next as Amazon fights back and tough
negotiations loom.
The win at Amazon is part of a trend not seen since the
labor movement during the Great Depression, when auto
and factory workers organized by the thousands
and won benefits we often take for granted today, like
overtime pay, the eight hour workday and the weekend
. Sarita Gupta of the Ford Foundation co-wrote a new
book about modern unions.
I think there's a lot of factors that are fueling
that, the biggest being the pandemic.
Like, is it worth risking my health?
In the sixties, safety in the workplace was also a
major motivator for a surge of unionizing that was
interwoven with the civil rights movement.
When Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated in 1968, he
was visiting Memphis to support a strike led
primarily by black sanitation workers after two
men were fatally crushed by a defective garbage
compactor on the job.
They carried signs that read I am a man, not unlike some
signs carried by Amazon workers today.
Now, more than half a century later, American
approval of unions is back at the highest it's been
since 1965.
A recent CNBC survey found 59% of U.S.
workers say they support increased unionization in
their own workplaces.
And in the first six months of fiscal year 2022, the
National Labor Relations Board saw a 57% increase in
the number of union filings from the year before, a big
surge in intent to unionize, and a 14% increase
in the number of unfair labor practice charges.
There were over 100,000 workers in October alone
last year of workers who are preparing to go on
strike. Something has really shifted culturally.
But while support for unions is high, actual
participation remains at a multi-decade low.
In 2021, U.S.
union membership was at 10.3%, down from 10.8% in
2020 and way down from 20% in 1983 and nearly 35% at
its peak in 1954.
Diana Furchtgott-Roth was chief economist for the U.S
. Department of Labor during the George W.
Bush administration.
Many people think, Well, I don't want to be paying 100
bucks a month to a union.
And that's why union representation has steadily
declined.
That steady decline is one reason it came as a shock to
many when on April 1st, Staten Island workers at a
factory called JFK8 voted in favor of the Amazon labor
union by a margin of more than 500 votes.
2654 yes to 2131 no.
So Amazon wouldn't let us inside the Staten Island
warehouse where workers voted to unionize in April.
Instead, they showed us this 1.3 million square foot
robotic fulfillment center in Carteret, New Jersey.
It's also the fulfillment center where Chris Smalls
first worked.
I worked at Amazon starting back in 2015.
I liked it at first. I enjoyed working with the
people that I was working with at the time.
The father of three was promoted to assistant
manager within a year, went to a new warehouse in
Connecticut in 2017, then in 2018, transferred to
Staten Island at JFK8, where he made $25 an hour.
Palmer makes $21.50 an hour.
The cost of living is going up.
The gas is going up.
Everything. Food is going up.
$30 is the minimum.
We're going to fight for that. And we told workers
that we're going to fight for $30 because they deserve
it, you know, working 10 hours.
At $15 an hour, Amazon's current minimum starting
wage is more than double the federal minimum wage and
higher than Walmart's $12 an hour minimum.
Amazon's competitive benefits package includes
health coverage on day one, fully paid family leave and
college tuition support.
Amazon management didn't come to that on their own.
Like, Oh, we decided suddenly to raise wages.
It took movements.
It took workers in their workplaces to organize.
Back at the New Jersey warehouse we toured, a
worker died this month during the annual Prime Day
rush. The Occupational Safety and Health
Administration is inspecting the death,
although no details have been released.
OSHA is also investigating working conditions at Amazon
warehouses in three other states.
Workers say they face a grueling pace of work with
strict limits on how much time off task they can rack
up, commonly called TOT.
It's been a problem at massive warehouses where it
can take several minutes to walk to bathrooms, a
football field away.
The union is asking for more transparency around how
they're tracked and disciplined for TOT.
We walk in to work one day, they say, Oh, we've been
tracking this for however long.
They put together the TOT and then that's it.
There's no say, there's no rebuttal, there's no plead
my case. That's it, you know, they walk you out the
door.
Amazon says that in 2021, just 0.4% of employees were
fired for their inability to perform the job.
Still leaked internal research from 2021 shows
Amazon has a turnover rate of 159%, nearly triple that
of the overall transportation and warehouse
sectors, meaning it churns through the equivalent of
all its warehouse workers more than once a year.
Amazon predicted it will deplete the available labor
supply in the U.S. network by 2024.
The people who voted for the union now are probably going
to be out in a year or even a few months.
And you'll get this group of workers who haven't voted
for the union, who are going to be having the juice
taken out of their paychecks.
But when the pandemic hit, Smalls says change was
urgent. Workers at JFK8 got sick.
One died.
In March 2020, Smalls led a walkout to pressure Amazon
to increase COVID safety protocols.
Reminding the CEO that you're making billions of
dollars a day. Meanwhile, the warehouses are still
suffering horrific conditions and this is a
life or death situation.
Amazon says it's invested billions of dollars to keep
employees safe during the pandemic. A couple of hours
after the walkout, Amazon fired Smalls, saying he
received multiple warnings for violating social
distancing guidelines.
I expected some type of repercussion for it, but
definitely didn't expect to lose my job.
A few days later, an internal memo was leaked in
which Amazon's general counsel called Smalls not
smart or articulate.
That moment right there motivated me to continue,
you know, especially after just being fired.
For the next year. He led protests in front of Jeff
Bezos's homes. Then Smalls and his former coworker and
friend, Derrick Palmer, decided to focus on forming
a union. They brought chairs to a bus stop outside
JFK8, where they camped out at all hours of the day and
night to talk to workers from every shift.
We definitely slept overnight in those chairs in
front of a big bonfire with a tent.
We would pass out food at nighttime all the way up
until the sunrise, and then pack up and get in our cars
and drive home like zombies. But, you know, it
was definitely worth it.
We had to make organizing the best environment for us
mentally as well. So to play music, hand out food,
books, whatever it took to change the culture of the
building, we did that.
The union was voted in by a majority of the 4700 plus
workers who cast a ballot, but some 3500 workers didn't
vote at all. In a statement, Amazon told CNBC,
We've always said that we want our employees to have
their voices heard. And in this case, that didn't
happen. Fewer than a third of the employees at the site
voted for the union, and overall turnout was
unusually low.
Since the win, Smalls has visited the White House and
stood side by side with pro-union lawmakers rallying
in support of other Amazon warehouses trying to
organize.
It's an extraordinary achievement.
You have taken on one of the most powerful corporations
in America. They spent millions of dollars trying
to defeat you.
Last year, Amazon spent $4.3 million on labor consulting
firms. Union votes at two other warehouses have
failed, including one just across the street from JFK8.
The workers at this small new warehouse called LDJ5
voted against joining the Amazon Labor Union in April.
LDJ5 has only been around for over a year now.
So, you know, they're battling not only adjusting
to the company and how the union busting was double
down in the smaller shop.
They had to learn all of this while trying to get
their coworkers to to vote yes.
It was just not the right time.
It is one of the most difficult processes for
workers to go through.
I can't stress that enough .
Workers actually take great risk to organize in their
workplaces today.
Just because LDJ5 didn't get a victory today doesn't mean
you guys aren't important to the ALU.
To understand how one Amazon warehouse unionized and
another didn't, let's take a look at how unionizing
works. When a group of employees decide they want
to try to unionize, the first step is for them to
collect their colleagues signatures on authorization
cards, which Smalls and Palmer often did at the bus
stop. Once they get at least 30% of workers to
sign, employees file a petition for an election
with the NLRB. If the majority of employees vote
for a union in the secret ballot election, it wins.
But before the union is officially recognized by the
NLRB, either party has seven days to file
objections to how the election took place.
After the win at JFK8, Amazon filed 25 objections,
including charges that union leaders bribed workers
with marijuana and harassed those who didn't support the
union. Five weeks of court hearings via Zoom concluded
this week, although no ruling has been made.
It's all B.S.
We played by the rules and we won.
Last spring, a union vote failed at another Amazon
warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. In that case, the
union filed objections against Amazon and won a
reelection. But the union lost that do-over too.
In a statement, Amazon told CNBC, Our employees have the
choice of whether or not to join a union.
They always have. As a company, we don't think
unions are the best answer for our employees.
Our focus remains on working directly with our
team to continue making Amazon a great place to
work. Back at JFK8, if the union vote stands after the
hearings conclude, it's time for perhaps the hardest
step in the process.
Negotiating the contract that will determine what
actually changes in the workplace.
Often employers decide to really delay the process to
make it hard. And sometimes I've been involved in
campaigns where first contract process could take
multiple years.
Here's what it takes to reach an impactful contract.
Employees meet with union representatives to
prioritize a set of issues to raise with the employer.
Then a committee made up of employees and union reps
presents proposals to managers at the bargaining
table. Management counteroffers, and the sides
begin to reach agreements on some proposals while
trading counteroffers over unresolved issues.
It usually takes months to reach the first contract.
Unions often have initiation fees, which are
usually waived for those employed during the first
contract. And of course there's dues which are used
to fund union staff and infrastructure.
Companies often dissuade workers from unionizing by
portraying the union as a third party hungry for dues.
Palmer says his pro-union colleagues had to counter
this message during mandatory captive audience
meetings Amazon held leading up to the vote.
Amazon told CNBC in a statement, We hold these
meetings, which have been legal for more than 70
years, with our employees because it's important that
everyone understands the facts about joining a union
and the election process itself.
It's better to have workers leading the charge inside
the captive audience, meaning shutting the
meetings down, so to say, giving that information out
to workers, building that family-oriented environment.
This grassroots approach is unusual when it comes to
union wins, especially against big companies.
The Amazon Labor Union is brand new.
In Bessemer, workers were voting on whether to join
the large, established Retail, Wholesale and
Department Store Union, which has some 100,000
members. Last year, Smalls and Palmer drove 16 hours to
Alabama to support the effort.
RWDSU, they're an established union.
But we saw a few flaws in their game plan.
Now, if you don't have organizers inside the
facility, it's hard to keep the morale up, it's hard to
counter what Amazon is doing with these captive
audience meetings.
But there are definite downsides to a small new
union, namely limited resources.
As the ALU grapples with the loss at LDJ5 and battles
Amazon in court for the right to negotiate, bigger
unions have stepped up to offer legal support,
donations and temporary office space.
The key ingredient seems like it's the organizing at
the very heart of knowing the workers in your
warehouse. How do you scale that to other warehouses?
Every warehouse has a different culture but the
same issues. What we did in Staten Island, it can't be
duplicated.
The unlikely victory of the grassroots effort at Amazon
happened at the same time workers were voting to form
small unions at other huge companies, including Google,
REI, Starbucks and Apple.
In June, just a couple of months after the ALU
victory, Apple retail workers voted in the
company's first ever U.S.
Union at a store in Towson, Maryland.
So it definitely is a little empowering knowing that this
is revolutionary. Again, we're making the change
that other people have tried to do but just haven't
been successful in doing.
We talk about the Starbucks and we talk about Amazon and
we support them and would love to see more companies
and more people stand up for themselves.
100%.
Apple and Amazon only have one location unionized for
now, but at Starbucks, the movement has spread rapidly
. Since the first store unionized in Buffalo, New
York, just seven months ago, more than 100 Starbucks
across 30 states have unionized, including this
one in Manhattan, where we met barista Laura Garza.
None of us make a livable wage.
There are many partners at my store that have 2 to 3
jobs.
Garza has been with Starbucks for 22 years and
helped organize her store, which won its vote the same
day as the Amazon Labor Union.
It was exciting to see the number of stores wanting to
unionize and just seeing this momentum of
unionization happen, not just on the East Coast but
across the country.
I just visited three Starbucks that are
unionizing in Cleveland a few days ago.
Garza and Smalls exchanged union pins recently when
they were both invited to the White House to discuss
their union efforts with Vice President Harris.
They heard some of our stories of fierce anti-union
busting not only from Starbucks but from Amazon.
Starbucks, meanwhile, denies any claims of anti-union
activity.
So why does a giant like Amazon or Starbucks or Apple
bother with the public expensive fight against
these small groups of workers unionizing?
At the end of the day, it's business and it all comes
down to money.
Workers in unions make on average 17% or nearly $200
more per week than non-union workers.
While Amazon wages are good compared to other warehouse
jobs, workers say it's not enough coming from one of
the world's most valuable companies. And over the four
decades that union membership has declined,
wages have stagnated, and there's been a rise in
income inequality.
Companies, especially coming out of the pandemic, are
profiting at huge levels, yet workers are still not
getting a slice of those profits.
And it makes people realize that collective action,
collective power, is needed to really change the game.
Back at the New Jersey warehouse where Amazon
allowed us inside, we spoke with one worker who loves
her job at Amazon.
They take care of you very well.
You know, they be on top of you with your safety.
But when asked how she would vote if her warehouse
organized a union.
Yes. I mean, why not?
She currently makes $19 an hour.
Is that enough to live here comfortably?
To live here comfortably?
No. Being honest, no.
Because especially now that everything have raised up.
If more workers like Felice joined unions, some experts
say it could help improve wage stagnation in the U.S.
It's going to make a long lasting effect for not just
JFK, but when we decide to unionize other facilities,
motivating them too.
What are some of the other warehouses that you're
talking to?
The entire country?
You know, every day that list grows, you know, people
reach out to us every day from different facilities
ever since April 1st.
Though isolated to a single warehouse for now, Smalls
and Palmer are committed to seeing long term economic
impacts from the Amazon Labor Union that won its
first election just a year after it was founded.
One thing I know, we made history, and that was great
to experience that with the world, but we know we're a
long way from our end road and we want to make sure
that what we're doing here is lasting forever, not just
a moment.