More Amazon Union Coverage

Another story I contributed to on the Amazon union vote in New York, this time at the Post. I was able to close the article with my usual happy uplifting self.

On Friday, thousands of Amazon workers on Staten Island will have the chance to cast their vote for an upstart union led by a former co-worker.Chris Smalls, a former worker at the JFK8 warehouse in New York, formed the independent Amazon Labor Union after he was fired from the company in early 2020. He’s grown the small group into a movement with dozens of organizers, strong support from some workers and did what many initially doubted — managed to secure a vote for the warehouse workers on whether they should form a union.

If the vote succeeds, the warehouse would be the first Amazon facility to unionize in the country — dealing a major blow to the e-commerce giant’s efforts to keep organized labor out. It would also mean Smalls’ small, independent union succeeded where many more established unions have faltered, something they argue is possible because it’s run by Amazon insiders.

The stakes of the elections are high, not just for the individuals who work inside the facilities, but for Amazon’s vast workforce across the country. Amazon Labor Union has also garnered enough signatures for an NLRB election at a nearby Amazon facility in Staten Island in late April. There are also separate organizing efforts underway at an Amazon Fresh store in Seattle.

Smalls has sought to create some distance between his union effort and the one taking place in Bessemer. Amazon Labor Union’s clout, as Smalls tells it, is that “we’ve lived the grievances.” In an interview earlier this year, Smalls said Amazon Labor Union observed what it felt were “mistakes” in the initial Bessemer campaign, such as playing up endorsements from politicians and celebrities. “None of that stuff resonates with workers. It’s not their fault, but it’s the reality of the situation.” (Smalls recently tweeted about actress and activist Susan Sarandon recently phone banking with Amazon Labor Union.)

OK, that last bit made me laugh.

But despite its momentum and early successes securing potential votes at two warehouses, the ALU faces a tough challenge in taking on the second-largest private employer in the U.S., a company that has seemingly unending resources to fight unionization. And there’s a big question mark regarding how many total workers will end up supporting the effort.

Yeah, we will see. Anyway….

To file for the vote, the ALU collected signatures from only about 30 percent of the Amazon workers, the required threshold campaigns need to meet in many cases in the U.S. But labor organizers typically try to secure roughly 70 percent or more, based on the assumption they will probably lose votes due to turnover and union busting.

OK……………………This is not going to go well.

Even with the insider view, it will be a tough battle for the ALU to win the vote, labor experts say. It’s difficult for any new union to form in the U.S., and that is especially true when a huge company like Amazon works to oppose it.“

Creating a union is a tremendously long and complicated and expensive process,” said Erik Loomis, an associate professor of history at the University of Rhode Island. “I think it’s highly unlikely that an independent union is going to transcend those challenges any better than an established union.”

There’s my optimism shining through.

Look, I’d like to for them to succeed. I hope very much I am wrong. But the reason to take this on independently, as Smalls himself has laid out, is about ideology more than strategy. Going to a vote with 30% card signing rate is going to mean, if the usual vote after cards signed plays out, something like 25% of the vote going yes. Maybe more than that if there is a large percentage of workers not voting. Inevitably though, fewer workers vote yes in the end than have signed cards. Your ideology about building a Real Workers Movement instead of using Sellout Neoliberal Unions doesn’t traditional get in the way of this.