{"id":90089,"date":"2021-03-23T19:25:12","date_gmt":"2021-03-23T19:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=349410"},"modified":"2021-03-23T19:25:12","modified_gmt":"2021-03-23T19:25:12","slug":"some-younger-amazon-workers-in-bessemer-new-to-unions-are-still-undecided","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/03\/23\/some-younger-amazon-workers-in-bessemer-new-to-unions-are-still-undecided\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Younger Amazon Workers in Bessemer, New to Unions, Are Still Undecided"},"content":{"rendered":"
Jason receives upwards<\/u> of two dozen text messages a day about his warehouse\u2019s union drive. Some are pro-union, and some against it. There are those from Amazon, his employer, to \u201cprotect what you have.\u201d Then there are messages from the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, known as RWDSU, urging him to use his vote to pave a new future for himself and the 5,805 workers at Amazon\u2019s colossal warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama.<\/p>\n
When he goes into work, Jason is confronted with \u201cVote No\u201d signs blanketing the 855,000-square-foot building, known as BHM1. The signs are in break rooms, at workstations, and even in bathroom stalls.<\/p>\n
Still, just days before voting ends on March 29, Jason remains undecided.<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone\u2019s been confused,\u201d said Jason,\u00a0who like many of the 10 Bessemer warehouse workers interviewed for this story did not provide his surname for fear of repercussions. \u201cIn my opinion, no one around my age in the building has a clear-cut answer of how they\u2019re going to decide.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 20-year-old stower \u2014 responsible for lifting boxes and scanning them for processing over a grueling 10-hour shift \u2014 is part of a sizable group of younger, noncommittal BHM1 workers. Their votes or abstentions could determine the outcome of the most closely watched American union election in decades.<\/p>\n
In a sign of the push to engage young workers in the union drive, groundwork is being laid to bring Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., to Alabama this weekend, according to two sources with knowledge of the planning. The trip, being put together by Sanders\u2019s office and a constellation of activist groups, along with the union organizing Amazon workers, would bring one of Congress\u2019s most ardent supporters of the labor push to the front line.<\/p>\n
More than 80 percent of the 5,805 Amazon warehouse workers in Bessemer are Black. While Sanders underperformed among Black voters in Southern Democratic primaries during the 2020 presidential race, younger Black Americans were more likely to support him.<\/p>\n
Jason, who is Black, is sympathetic to the union effort but admits his unfamiliarity with unions has delayed his decision. His story resembles that of other younger workers in the warehouse \u2014 something an older generation of local workers, many of whom have led the union drive, has come to recognize.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of the young people don\u2019t realize what the union\u2019s all about because they haven\u2019t been taught the history,\u201d said Mona Darby, a local poultry processing plant worker who has been a union member for 33 years. Darby was one of two dozen poultry and warehouse workers who showed up last October outside the Amazon warehouse to effectively launch the RWDSU\u2019s on-the-ground organizing campaign.<\/p>\n
There, at the tiny intersection of Premiere Parkway and Power Plant Road, she and other RWDSU organizers clad in the union\u2019s bright-red colors have gathered nearly daily for months to speak to thousands of workers coming and leaving their shifts.<\/p>\n
Darby said she often has to counter \u201cmisinformation\u201d about the union when speaking to younger workers at the intersection\u2019s stoplight. \u201cThey\u2019ve been told by managers that the union means less money in their pockets and the end to their benefits,\u201d said Darby. \u201cI tell them to just give us a chance and we can show you what we can do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the course of reporting with workers in Bessemer earlier this month, both supporters and opponents of the union acknowledged that the outcome of the vote will not fall neatly along age lines.<\/p>\n
Yet the organizing effort has been largely led by older workers, many of whom worked in union jobs before coming to Amazon. And many younger BHM1 workers have never interacted with a union over the course of their working lives and may have little understanding of the role a union has traditionally played in the workplace \u2014 a consequence, labor experts say, of a decadeslong assault on organized labor in the Deep South.<\/p>\n
Alabama\u2019s post-war deindustrialization, coupled with capital flight and the domination of the so-called right-to-work movement\u2019s push<\/a> to make unions optional over the last 40 years has denied an entire generation the education, collective memory and material benefits of labor unions, said UCLA professor Robin D.G. Kelley, an expert on Alabama labor history.<\/p>\n \u201cYoung Amazon workers in Bessemer are in a unique position,\u201d said Kelley, whose seminal 1991 book \u201cHammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression\u201d documented organized labor\u2019s heyday in industrial powerhouse Alabama in the 1930s. \u201cThey have the ability here to upend the prevailing public narrative that they\u2019ve been fed all their lives, which demonizes unions as \u2018takers\u2019 and praises employers as \u2018makers\u2019 and forge a new path for workers in the 21st century.\u201d<\/p>\n BHM1 sits on land once owned by U.S. Steel, a major employer in the region until the latter half of the 20th century. The steel industry\u2019s collapse precipitated Bessemer\u2019s decline along with it.<\/p>\n When Amazon opened the Bessemer\u00a0fulfillment center\u00a0in late March 2020, as the Covid-19 pandemic began to ravage the country, the company hired an initial 1,500 workers. Bessemer officials hailed the\u00a0facility as an economic boon for a city where nearly 30 percent of residents live in poverty.<\/p>\n Bessemer Mayor Kenneth Gulley said<\/a> Amazon\u2019s $361 million investment in the center was the largest to ever come to the 138-year-old city. Left unmentioned was that the city had granted Amazon $3.3 million<\/a> in tax incentives, in addition to promised investments in road improvements. (Gulley, who has not publicly stated his position on the BHM1 union election, did not respond to a request for comment for this article.)<\/p>\n The historic union election in Bessemer has gained global attention because who the union is challenging. Amazon\u2019s net profit soared<\/a>\u00a084 percent in 2020, with sales hitting $386 billion, even as tens of millions of Americans lost their jobs<\/a> on account of layoffs and Covid-19 lockdowns. In October, Amazon disclosed<\/a> that nearly 20,000 of its more than 1 million U.S. employees had contracted Covid-19. Then-Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos added a staggering $132 billion to his wealth, becoming the public face of stark income inequality during the pandemic.<\/p>\n \u201cI think that the pandemic has opened a lot of people\u2019s eyes,\u201d RWDSU President Stuart Appelbaum told The Intercept, \u201cthat you need a collective voice in the workplace.\u201d<\/p>\n BHM1 workers in support of the union say they want job security, better working conditions, a return of $2-an-hour pandemic hazard pay, less invasive surveillance at work, and to curb the use of aggressive time clock practices where workers are docked pay. The overwhelming sentiment among those workers interviewed by The Intercept \u2014 even among those voting against the union \u2014 was that workers wanted to be treated as human beings, not as detached robots in the relentless algorithm-driven assembly line of the Amazon warehouse.<\/p>\nPoverty and Inequality<\/h3>\n