Amazon is doing its best to squash any organizing effort among its
workers in various facilities.
Because as you can imagine, the fact that one of their warehouses in New York,
JFK8 as it's known successfully unionized.
And that has encouraged workers at other facilities to organize and do the same.
Now, JFK8 unionized with their own union and it was such a success story,
such an inspiring story that I was hoping that it would motivate other workers.
But it turns out that amazon is looking for ways to squash that effort.
So let's specifically talk about one of the sorting facilities in Staten Island,
known as LDJ5.
The workers there are currently organizing to form a union and why are they doing it?
Well, it's a little different from JFK8 where they were dealing with long,
grueling shifts.
The workers at this sorting facility are asking for more hours.
They want to make sure that they get benefits, which they certainly deserve.
And they've noticed that they're not getting full time work in an effort to
prevent them from getting the benefits that they're seeking.
So one of the organizers over at JFK8 said this.
You have a lot of part-time workers here who want to be full time workers, and
they put in applications to transfer to full-time.
But the bosses here instead of letting them do that,
they have flooded the warehouse with part-time workers.
To not have to give them the sort of meager benefits that exist for
full-time workers.
And guys, we see this happening all across our economy with various companies.
They'll schedule their workers to work just the right amount of hours, so
they don't trigger any type of regulation that indicates that they would have to
provide benefits for these workers.
Now LDJ5 employees also want voluntary extra time and 20 minutes, I'm sorry.
Yes, 20 minute breaks, up from 15 minute breaks.
Listen, the fact that they have to fight so aggressively for
an additional five minutes to take a break.
Tells you everything you need to know about the importance of organizing
your workplace to ensure that workers have some power over their working conditions.
And the decisions that are made about those working conditions.
But amazon of course is trying to fight them tooth and nail.
The company has clamped down on union activity in recent days at LDJ5,
by repeatedly dismantling a pro-union banner in the break room.
Disciplining a leader of the unionization effort at LDJ5 for her organizing
activity on the warehouse floor, and also confiscating pro-union literature.
Very similar to what we saw at other amazon facilities.
Amazon has also continued to hold, this shouldn't shock you,
daily mandatory anti-union meetings and one-on-ones at LDJ5.
And ALU organizers say that the company has hired anti-union consultants,
which is a favorite tactic with these major corporations.
Who typically work as independent contractors as full-time employees with
blue badges that allow them to blend in better with workers in the warehouse.
So they've got some moles running around, right?
Individuals that are posing as workers.
By the way, the anti-union consultants who are third party contractors,
getting full-time work to crush the unionizing effort.
Tells you everything you need to know about what the executives over at amazon
are prioritizing.
In fact, one worker at this sorting facility said this.
All these union busters that were there to union bust 8000 workers at
JFK8 have walked across the street and are in our little building of 1, 600 people.
They're really fighting us and they're playing really dirty.
Now, Amazon has spent a whopping $4.3 million
on their union busting efforts in 2021 alone.
And so a 2020 analysis by the Economic Policy Institute found that only a few
employers have spent more than $1 million dollars on anti-union consultants.
And it's typically taken several years to rack up such a bill.
Any spending in the hundreds of thousands of dollars is on the high end.
None of the companies in EPIs analysis came close to spending as much
as amazon has in such a short period of time.
And their tactics are incredibly gross, for instance,
amazon has planned an internal messaging app.
We've talked about this on the show before, that would block workers from
using words or phrases like union, pay raises, living wage, or representation.
And that's according to documents that were leaked to the Intercept.
This was a story that was originally reported by Ken Klopfenstein over at
the Intercept.
Also, Amazon's desperate union busting sometimes ends up having
the opposite effect, which I love to see.
I love to see it backfire.
For instance, one of the workers Louis Leon, I'm sorry,
Louis Leon is the reporter over at Labor Notes that reported about Kathleen Cole.
She got involved with the unionization effort at LDJ5
after she was compelled to attend a captive audience meeting.
She's quoted as saying, to be honest with you, If they were fair and
neutral in these meetings, I probably never would have gotten involved.
So God, I'd love to see that effect.
But I also wanna talk a little bit about where the public is when
it comes to unionizing.
And when I say the public, I'm not just talking about workers at Amazon.
I'm talking about Americans in general, all these different demographics,
all these different political ideologies.
Where do they stand on organizing your workplace, unionizing your workplace?
Well, let's take a look at this graphic, I love to see it.
This is from a More Perfect Union.
They find that 75% of Americans say Amazon workers need a union, love to see it.
75% of recent Amazon customers, by the way,
would like to see the workers unionize.
And when you look at this number, Americans between the ages of 18 to 34, it
tells you something really important about where the American mindset is right now.
83% of Americans between the ages of 18 to 34 support the unionization effort.
Okay, 80% of Americans between the ages of 35 to 49,
and even 71% of Trump voters between the ages of 18 to 34.
I wanna absorb that a little more because it's really, really important
to understand why we're seeing the right wing use a lot of this populist rhetoric.
And it's important to understand that it's all Bs.
So they realize that even their voters, their viewers,
in the case of Tucker Carlson are paying close attention to
this effort to create a better work environment for workers.
I wanna pause in being too optimistic,
I want to be realistic about what's happening in the country.
Yes, we're seeing more militant efforts by labor to take control of their workplaces.
And certainly relative to what we had experienced in previous decades, okay?
But the fact of the matter is unions represent such a tiny,
tiny amount of the work force here in the United States.
So we wanna be real about that.
However, there's a lot more attention being paid to
these efforts now than we've seen in the past several decades.
And you think that Republican lawmakers haven't noticed that.
You think Republican lawmakers don't understand how insanely frustrated
Americans are about how rigged this economic system is against them,
by the way.
No, they know, they see the anger, they see the rage, but at the end of the day,
while they might pay lip service to these frustrations,
are they ever willing to do anything about it?
You think they're interested in regulating corporations, so
they're not abusing their workers?
Of course they're not, you think they're in favor of workers unionizing?
You think they're in favor of a policy like the PRO Act that would provide worker
protection.
So as they're attempting to unionize,
they're not retaliated against from their employers.
They're not in favor of those kinds of bills.
In fact,
anytime you hear a populist rhetoric coming from the likes of Tucker Carlson,
he immediately pivots to, we got to close our borders, hate black people.
Democrats or groomers, whatever nonsense that he pivots to.
It's usually some culture war narrative that he wants to engage in, but
it's never really about empowering workers.
At the end of the day, what labor militancy is about is power.
Power in your workplace, power over your own life,
power over what you get paid, and the wages that you make.
And I haven't seen any Republican genuinely fight on
behalf of workers who want those things.
Now to be clear, there are a lot of corporate democrats running around,
who like to talk the talk when they're campaigning.
But they also just like to pay lip service without carrying out
the fight necessary to enact the laws.
That workers need for that added protection,
if they're looking to unionize or organize their workplace.
But I want everyone to be careful about the rhetoric that they hear from
these politicians.
I want you to be careful about the populist nonsense coming from
the right wing.
Because at the end of the day, for
anyone who's arguing, we got to work with them to build a broad coalition.
That might be true with Republican voters, but
that's very different from someone like Tucker Carlson.
Who might have someone on to go after AOC
under this guys of union organizing.
You think he wants to support union organizing?
You think he wants workers to be treated better?
No, he thinks the problem with Corporate America is there too woke,
not that they're abusive toward their workers.
Or that they're maximizing their profits, and
essentially screwing over their workers in order to do so.
He loves that system, he's been a proponent of that system, and will
continue to be a proponent of that system, and we'll keep calling him out for that.
But when it comes to the people who are really putting themselves at risk, and
doing so to better their own lives, and the lives of their colleagues.
It's the workers over at Amazon who in the case of JFK8 successfully unionized.
And hopefully in the case of this sorting facility in Staten Island,
they'll be able to do the same.
Now, by the way, going back to that more perfect union poll.
The poll also found that the unions argument was significantly more popular.
Roughly 20% points higher than the management side argument that workers
don't need a union because they already have good pay and benefits.
I mean, obviously, obviously, I mean, most Americans see what's going on.
There is that disconnect between what we see in Congress,
the discourse that's taking place among our lawmakers, and
what ordinary Americans are experiencing in their day to day lives.
Finally, a few other things I wanna mention in regard to what Amazon is up to,
as they try to crush these efforts.
Amazon has filed 25 objections with the National Labor Relations Board
seeking to overturn the amazon labor unions watershed victory over at JFK8.
Arguing that the independent union intimidated workers into voting to
unionize and challenging how the NLRB conducted the election.
Yeah, sure, they can't stand the fact that the workers succeeded and
so now they're trying to crush that effort.
Look, one of the areas where I think the Biden administration is certainly better
than previous democratic administrations.
Is this NLRB seems to be far more effective and
far more willing to fight on behalf of ordinary workers.
They have stepped in to go after Amazon as it tried to crush organizing efforts.
I love to see that, and again, that is rare.
We didn't see that during the Obama administration.
So while we've been critical of Joe Biden and
some of the weaknesses we've seen in his administration.
I do wanna give him credit for what we've been seeing with his NLRB.