Amazon workers could make a breakthrough at a company that has done everything it can to trample organized labor. Nearly 6,000 employees in Bessemer, Alabama, fulfillment center will soon be able to do that voting on whether or not to unite; mail-in ballots must be submitted no later than March 29, and the National Labor Relations Board will count them the next day.
However, someone is not happy with the organizing efforts.
A person or entity created a gross, cartoonish anti-union website, Doitwithoutdues.com. “HEY BHM1 DOERS, why are you paying nearly $ 500 in dues?” Says a splash photo of a warehouse worker giving a thumbs up. (BHM1 is the name of the Bessemer warehouse.) “We’ve got you covered * with high pay, healthcare, vision and dental benefits, as well as a safety committee and appeals process. You can do so much MORE for your career and your family without paying dues. “
Amid cheery decorations – an Amazon pack of hearts and a GIF of a corgi spinning a record – the site misleadingly claims employees are being locked in pay dues. (This is not true: Nobody is forced to become a dues-paying union member even if workers vote to join a union.) The site provides a portal for employees to return cards they would have signed to petition for an election. to the National Labor Relations Board.
At the bottom of the site is an Amazon logo. In an email, an Amazon spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied that the site is affiliated with the company.
G / O Media can receive a commission
The BHM1 stockroom opened early in the pandemic, when Amazon created a recruitment. The pandemic has also been correlated with a nationwide wave of workers’ organization, including protests against it unsafe conditions and fair wages; meanwhile increased public scrutiny and rising demand she gave a little more leverage. Amazon workers have been fighting to organize for years, and Amazon has met them with anti-unions propaganda and supervision, like dismissal. (While it is illegal to fire an employee for organization, Amazon employees are in Alabama can be fired at any time for any reason without a union.)
When workers vote to join a union, they are represented by the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). The RWDSU declined to comment, but it has previously supported Whole Foods Employeesattempt to unite and represented a warehouse worker on Staten Island who was fired after he spoke out for better working conditions.
In an emailed statement to Gizmodo, Amazon did not say it is anti-union necessarily, but that “we do not believe that the RDWSU represents the majority of the opinion of our employees.” It’s unclear where the RDWSU’s ‘views’ deviate from those of employees, but Amazon claimed it offers ‘some of the best jobs available anywhere’.
This may still be true, but employees may also want things like job stability and a grievance mechanism so they don’t have to choose their great job over things like going to the bathroom. Employees could also negotiate risk compensation that the company would pay granted and then withdrawn a few months after the pandemic. (In October, before the worst winter wave, the the company said that nearly 20,000 workers had contracted Covid-19.) Add to reports of years brutally long shifts below supervision, recent reports have revealed overwhelming prices from injuries in the company’s warehouses.
Amazon, the New York Times has noted, has not come so close to a union since 2014, when the vast majority of 27 technical workers voted against unionization. A representative of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers then said that workers “were under great pressure from managers and anti-union advisers.”