Expanding Amazon Union Efforts
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If the Amazon labor organizing is going to succeed, it needs a whole lot more than one facility in Staten Island. Like with Starbucks, it needs a lot of facilities. Maybe this is going to happen. At the very least, the program is moving forward with workers at a few facilities moving toward organizing.
In Garner, North Carolina, a suburb of Raleigh, workers are pushing to organize a union at the Amazon warehouse RDU1, a 700,000 sq ft facility with four floors.
Through the grassroots organization Cause, Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment, workers are demanding a $5 an hour pay increase; a return to digital time clocks rather than physical ones, where workers are forced to wait in long lines to punch in and out; longer breaks; a revision to Amazon’s time-off options; the formation of a worker committee to address grievances and appeals; and mental health resources for workers.
Albert Elliot, who has worked at the Garner plant for about 18 months, said the organizing effort began in response to mistreatment of workers across the board, from discrimination, racism, unequal treatment from managers, unfair write-ups, and insufficient breaks for the work they do.“We are treated like robots, as if we have batteries on our backs,” said Elliott. “Management, they’re actually the robots. They have been trained to give this generic Amazon response of, ‘Well, we’re sorry that you feel that way,’ and so on and so forth. It’s just a generic response because they don’t know what to say and they don’t know what to do.”
Elliott said organizing at Amazon is challenging because of the sheer size of the warehouse, and how disconnected workers are from one another. He said the focus on productivity and short breaks provides little time to communicate with co-workers, and there’s a sense of fear among workers who are not aware of their rights in the workplace.
“That’s part of our name and part of our slogan: to educate and to empower. We want to educate on each and every thing they have a right to, because the first thing you often hear people say is ‘I don’t want to lose my job’ or ‘I’m afraid I’ll get written up’,” said Elliott.
“Because of the treatment going on, a lot of workers are quitting. They feel like they don’t have a voice and they don’t stand a chance against this Amazon giant.”
He also noted that the high employee turnover makes it difficult to organize, but that they are trying to emphasize the message: ‘Don’t quit. Organize.’
This point is so, so important. One of the necessary ingredients for organizing is workers’ commitment to stay in the job. The fact that workers are unhappy is usually a major reason for unionization. And I am certainly not going to tell someone not to make the decision that is best for them and get a new job. But if you do get that new job, then you are probably still just going to be unhappy and not empowered, just like the workers left behind at the old job. Unionization requires commitment to stick around and fight. We will see if that happens here, especially given Amazon going full Gilded Age in its unionbusting tactics.