A slew of Amazon employees in Baltimore, New Orleans, Portland, Denver and Southern California are investigating union organizations, encouraged by their Alabama colleagues’ high-profile union action Bloomberg reported Friday.
Amazon workers have been fighting to organize for years grueling workloads unsafe conditions amid the global Covid-19 pandemic, dystopic workplace surveillance, and Amazon’s history of blatant retaliation against those who speak out against this unjust treatment. Almost now 6,000 employees at an Amazon distribution center in the predominantly black city of Bessemer, Alabama, will vote this month on whether or not to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.
In an interview with Bloomberg, the RWDSU said 1,000 Amazon employees across the country have already reached out to explore their options for potential unions in their own facilities.
“People understand that this is something much bigger than Alabama and even bigger than Amazon,” RWDSU Stuart Appelbaum told the outlet. “It’s really about the future of work and how workers will be treated.”
Several Amazon employees Bloomberg spoke to began talking to their colleagues about unionizing after seeing the success of the Alabama campaign. A warehouse employee in Denver, Colorado, said he has created an online chat room where colleagues can discuss the organization. Another warehouse worker in New Orleans, Louisiana, said he took the five-hour drive to Bessemer last month to attend a pro-union meeting. He added that all the hard work of his Alabama colleagues could become a flashpoint for reform if other Amazon warehouse workers followed suit.
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“If the most powerful company in the world can be united in an anti-union state like Alabama, it gives hope to people in Louisiana, Mississippi, West Virginia, who are trying to do the same,” he told the outlet. “We just have to support the fight wherever it is because the fight is coming to us.”
However, many workers fear retaliation, given Amazon’s rigorous efforts to break unions over the years. The company runs an extensive anti-union campaign in Alabama and promotes advertisements Twitch, owned by Amazon, Twitter and other social media platforms, SMS workers with pro management messages and running recruitment ads for union experts President Joe Biden even weighed in on Amazon’s interference in the run-up to the Alabama vote, warning the e-commerce giant that its union-breaking efforts must include “ no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda. ”
A warehouse worker in Pennsylvania told Bloomberg that, with all this in mind, on top of Amazon’s already grueling workload, it was difficult to give colleagues enough fire to even start union talks.
“People are just trying to work and go home,” she said in an interview with the outlet. “Amazon makes you very tired, both physically and mentally exhausted, but the benefits are good.”
Alabama’s election will be conducted via ballots counted on March 30, after which Amazon could see a spate of industrial action in its other warehouses and beyond. A recent nationwide poll shared with Gizmodo surveyed hundreds of Amazon deliverers in the US and Canada and found that the majority of them supported the union organization.
In his interview with Bloomberg, Appelbaum said that even if Amazon workers in Alabama ultimately choose not to unite, “this campaign will result in an explosion in the organization nationwide.”