Amazon fired Chris Smalls. Now the new union leader is one of its biggest problems.
Long article. Good read.
To do that, Smalls and the ALU will need more support — politically, financially, and logistically — to face the uphill battle to unionize Amazon. The stakes are incredibly high: Amazon is the nation’s second-largest private employer, and it helps set the standard for baseline labor conditions at many companies across the US. If the ALU can win more warehouses, it could propel a growing class of workers who are forming unions — not just at Amazon, but at other major employers like Starbucks, Apple, and Dollar General — to demand a better quality of life from their employers. Whether or not the ALU succeeds will depend on whether Smalls and his team can effectively scale their grassroots organizing efforts on a national level, and if they can withstand Amazon, which spent $4.3 million in anti-union consulting last year alone and is expected to continue pouring in more money in the year ahead.
Smalls’s performance in DC revealed how, despite having no formal public relations training or media background, he has gotten the entire country’s attention. Even his choice of clothing for his Capitol visit — a bright red, yellow, and black bomber jacket embroidered with the words “Eat the Rich” — made national headlines.
One of Amazon’s main tactics is to have consultants and in-house staff run “captive audience meetings” in facilities — meaning mandatory presentations for employees about why they shouldn’t vote for the union. The ALU alleges that at these meetings, management sometimes threatened workers that they could lose their jobs if they vote yes. Currently, the general counsel of the NLRB is asking the board to consider making mandatory captive audience meetings illegal, something labor advocates have long argued for, but that could take months if not years to be decided.
To organize effectively at Amazon, Smalls said, you have to know the “ins and outs” of warehouse work culture. “You gotta know the departments, you gotta know the positions. You gotta work in all of these things too — you can’t just know about it.”
https://www.vox.com/recode/23145265/amazon-fired-chris-smalls-union-leader-alu-jeff-bezos-bernie-sanders-aoc-labor-movement-biden
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