{"id":123801,"date":"2021-04-16T08:44:21","date_gmt":"2021-04-16T08:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=134964"},"modified":"2021-04-16T08:44:21","modified_gmt":"2021-04-16T08:44:21","slug":"monopoly-versus-democracy-reflections-on-unionizing-amazon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/04\/16\/monopoly-versus-democracy-reflections-on-unionizing-amazon\/","title":{"rendered":"Monopoly Versus Democracy: Reflections on Unionizing Amazon"},"content":{"rendered":"

About 16% of Amazon workers voted to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union in Bessemer, Alabama, according to the monopoly company\u2019s statement<\/a>. Consider in what way the process happened.<\/p>\n

We turn to author, journalist and professor Juan Gonz\u00e1lez. \u201cHow do more than 2,000 workers sign union cards at Amazon\u2019s Alabama plant but only 700 vote yes?\u201d he tweeted<\/a> \u00a0Bully-style, the monopoly company intimidated its workforce captive management meetings with employees, a legal tactic.<\/p>\n

Thus, labor law reform is one site of employees\u2019 struggle to form unions at Amazon. \u201cThe Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act \u2026 would institute meaningful penalties for private-sector employers that coerce and intimidate workers seeking to unionize\u2014as has been clearly documented in the Amazon organizing campaign in Bessemer,\u201d according to Celine McNicholas<\/a> of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington DC.<\/p>\n

Yet a loss is still a loss, right? Dr. William J. Barber, who co-founded the Poor People\u2019s Campaign, A National Call for Moral Revival, and is president and senior lecturer of Repairers of the Breach, says otherwise. “The Amazon workers who voted for a union in Bessemer are already winners,\u201d he said in a statement. \u201cThis is just the first round. Amazon did things to intimidate and suppress the vote. The workers are filing complaints, and they will continue to stand up. They have set a fresh trend in the South, and the echoes of their bold action will reverberate for years.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Amazon is a global monopoly company, capital\u2019s overwhelming power over labor has been a defining feature of life in the American South particularly and the Global South generally. In the USA, that unequal class relationship persists from chattel slavery centuries ago to right-to-work red states such as Alabama now.<\/p>\n

Rev. Barber wrapped with this viewpoint. “In North Carolina, it took several years for us to unionize the Smithfield plant, the world’s largest hog processing plant. Like them, the Bessemer workers will eventually win the vote. Jeff Bezos and Amazon, who fought the union and cut workers\u2019 hazard pay, have already lost because they have revealed their contempt for the people their wealth depends on.”<\/p>\n

Not far from Bessemer in Alabama, the United Mine Workers of America are continuing a strike begun on April 1 at Warrior Met coalmines. About 1,000 members of the UMWA voted to continue the strike on April 9. Meanwhile, the UMWA plans to launch \u201cUnity Rallies\u201d in the Brookwood, Ala., area for union members, families and community supporters to build solidarity, inviting local and national allies, according to a union press release.<\/p>\n

Further, the UMWA backed the Amazon workers\u2019 bid to unionize in Bessemer. Phil Smith is the UMWA director of communications and government affairs. \u201cUMWA leaders and members attended several events with the RWDSU organizers in support of their efforts to organize the Amazon workers,\u201d he told me via email, \u201cand we continue to lend our name and support to that union\u2019s efforts in Bessemer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such support is essential. Amazon\u2019s deep and union-free pockets have grown deeper to rent elected officials during the pandemic recession. \u201cThe profits of Amazon and Walmart increased 70% and 45% respectively in the first three quarters of 2020 as compared with the same period in 2019,\u201d according to Molly Kinder, Laura Stateler, and Julia Du of the Brookings Institute. https:\/\/www.brookings. edu\/essay\/windfall-profits-and-deadly-risks\/. With those profits, Amazon increases its power to rule marketplaces and workplaces.<\/p>\n

Suffice it to say efforts to unionize the Bessemer workers face the billions of Bezos (a proxy for the ruling class). How to counter such class power? Worker solidarity including consumer boycotts are tools in the toolkit of people in and out of labor unions to force wealth and the power it controls to improve living and working conditions broadly across the economy stateside and abroad.<\/p>\n

Women and men make history under conditions that they inherit, an old German wrote long ago. Over the past 40 years in America, bipartisan policies have shifted income and wealth from the bottom and middle to the top. As a result, the US private-sector union density rate is 6.2%, and monopoly firms such as Amazon lord their wealth over employees. How fast can the pushback from below grow under a widening class divide and Biden administration?<\/p>\n

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The post Monopoly Versus Democracy: Reflections on Unionizing Amazon<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

About 16% of Amazon workers voted to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union in Bessemer, Alabama, according to the monopoly company\u2019s statement. Consider in what way the process happened. We turn to author, journalist and professor Juan Gonz\u00e1lez. \u201cHow do more than 2,000 workers sign union cards at Amazon\u2019s Alabama plant but only More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Monopoly Versus Democracy: Reflections on Unionizing Amazon<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":372,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123801"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/372"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123801"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":124429,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123801\/revisions\/124429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}