The ALU also benefited from geography. “New York City is a union city,” RWDSU president Stuart Appelbaum said at a news conference Thursday night, noting that he was “enthusiastic” for the ALU, which was leading the way in the results at the time. “It’s one of the most union-friendly cities in one of the most union-friendly cities in the United States. Alabama, on the other hand, has a different environment. It’s a right to work state with a very, very low union density.” (Unions in right-of-work states can’t require workers to pay union dues or membership fees, weakening their power.)
In both Bessemer and Staten Island, Amazon sent expensive union avoidance consultants to conduct relentless anti-union campaigns, harassing workers with “no” texts, in-app messages, letters, advertisements, one-on-one conversations and anti-union rallies. . A report published Thursday by the Huffington Post found that the company spent $4.3 million on anti-union advisers last year. Over the course of a year-long campaign, the ALU filed dozens of unfair labor charges against the NLRB, accusing Amazon of actions such as clearing up pro-union literature and retaliating against ALU supporters.
Amazon has long fought against the organization of labor, but the Covid-19 crisis has accelerated it. Employee dissatisfaction grew as executives made billions in profits, while essential workers risked their safety to meet the explosive growth demand for e-commerce during the pandemic. A few months after the lockdown, fed up workers in Bessemer contacted the RWDSU about unionization.
Other workers staged protests and strikes, criticizing the company for not protecting them enough. In Staten Island, Amazon employees Christian Smalls, Gerald Bryson, Jordan Flowers and Derrick Palmer staged a JFK8 warehouse strike after Smalls said senior management had asked him not to notify the Tier 1 employees he supervised. assessing their exposure to Covid-19.
In a statement, Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel wrote: “Since the early days of Covid, we have always followed the guidelines of federal and local health authorities, and our own workplace health and safety experts and independent epidemiologists so that we can continue to serve communities. while providing a safe and healthy work environment,” citing the $15 billion the company has spent on Covid-19 safety.
The company promptly fired Smalls for violating a quarantine policy, which he said only existed after he was fired. It also fired Bryson for violating a policy against vulgar language. Last month, the labor commission asked a federal court to reinstate Bryson, who had filed a lawsuit for unfair labor practices, and charge the company with retaliation. Executives promised to make Smalls the face of the union movement, according to a memo leaked to Vice that said he was “neither smart nor articulate.” Smalls wanted to “make them eat their words.”
Smalls traveled across the country to continue his demonstrations, including one in October 2020 outside Jeff Bezos’ mansion in Beverly Hills. In April 2021, Smalls and his former colleagues launched the Amazon Labor Union, with Smalls as president.
The organizers campaigned daily in the warehouse, setting up a makeshift headquarters at a nearby bus stop, which they manned through rain, snow and sub-zero temperatures until an NLRB settlement in December allowed them to occupy the break rooms in the facility. They flooded social media with images of food deliveries to workers and videos of union members criticizing company representatives during anti-union meetings. They demanded the Voice of the Associates Board, where employees can post feedback for their supervisors, to challenge anti-union messages. They told workers that the ALU was fighting for a wage increase to $30 an hour, longer breaks and better job security, among other things.
