Welcome back to Cheddar News is closing bell amazon warehouse
workers in Alabama are set to begin voting to unionize
for a second time. Now this comes after workers
at the facility in the town of Bessemer overwhelmingly voted
against forming a union in an election early last year
but in november the national Labor relations Board overturned that
result, upholding a union challenge of the results which
argued that amazon undermined the conditions for a fair election
. Another round of ballots will be now mailed out
to workers at the warehouse for a so called rerun
election here. Now to discuss is john Logan director
of labor and employment studies at SAN Francisco State University
and mike Olis, national field director for our revolution
and a labor organizer who worked on Alabama's warehouses first
union campaign. So thanks for joining us. Gentlemen
, mike I want to start with you. Do
you think the second election will lead to a different
result this time and that workers will actually vote to
unionize? Look make it very, very clear this
is a tough election in America. It is hard
to organize a union hard, it's very hard to
organize a union and uh we got to honor the
bravery, the bravery and the strength these workers who
are going through this process for a second time.
You have everyday families and workers going up a trillion
dollar company with billionaire owners right who um who had
everything they could to poison the well against the union
last time. So it's extremely hard to organize a
union in this country. I've seen it very personally
upfront and close. So uh, win or lose
this election. The workers and best summer has are
strong and brave and deserve all the credit in the
world for standing up to corporate America. And this
is a reckoning for corporate America whether they win or
lose this election, john, as mike pointed out
, organizers face a big challenge. You know,
unions have only one fewer than half of similar re
rerun elections since 2010. And worker Tony over at
amazon is pretty high. It's over 100 and 50%
a year according to the new york times. Now
, this could cause some uncertainty around union efforts.
Can you elaborate a little bit more on some of
the challenges that these organizers face? Yeah, I
mean, as mike said, part of the problem
is that the legal protections for choosing a union in
the United States are weak by comparison of any other
advanced democracy. But the second thing is that corporations
are very anti union for the most part and it's
particularly true of amazon. Now, amazon today is
probably the richest and most sophisticated anti union company in
the country, probably on the planet. I mean
, even more so than walmart, even more so
than all of the companies we think of as archetypal
anti union companies um, in the last election in
february and March of last year, amazon really threw
everything it had at defeating the union drive by the
R. W. T. S. You and
making sure that this facility remained union free. According
as you said, according to the National Labor Relations
Board, it committed serious violations of federal labor law
in the process. And that's why the N.
L. R. B. Overturned the first election
result and called for this rerun election. Um,
but um, you know, amazon again will do
everything it can to defeat the union because amazon is
really concerned that if the union were successful at best
summer in Alabama or at any other single facility,
this would uh, you know, act as an
inspiration for amazon workers all over the country. And
you would see organizing campaigns, you know, not
just in Bessemer, but in new york and Chicago
in Minneapolis and sacramento. Already, we see labor
activity in all of those locations, but it would
just be a tremendous boost to the workers trying to
form unions amazon in other locations if the union were
successful in Alabama. So once again, your amazon
will do everything in its power to try to defeat
the campaign. And you know, we see that
in multiple different ways during this campaign, you know
, with the workers being dragged into the so called
captive audience meetings. Uh they're basically forced anti union
listening section sessions that the workers are required to attend
where outside highly paid consultants tell them all of the
reasons why individually and collectively uh that the union,
according to them would be bad for amazon bad for
the workforce. They're bombarded with text messages every day
everywhere around the facility. They see anti union messages
on the so called acid screens, tv screens are
all around the workplace. Um, even in the
restrooms and best swimmer in the last election, amazon
had anti union propaganda in the inside of the stalls
and the last the restroom. So there really was
no escaping the anti union message the moment you arrived
at the facility, to the moment that you left
after your shift was finished. And even then,
even at home, you would being bombarded by anti
union text messages. Um, the so called a
taxi app that amazon uses for personnel purposes was transformed
and sorry, john, I just want to jump
in right there. And you pointed out such great
examples and I know, mike you actually worked with
the Alabama warehouse, um, when they did their
first vote election. Um, was this kind of
what you saw. And were you so surprised that
it turned out so overwhelmingly against unionization? Absolutely.
I wasn't surprised because, You know, I've been
a union organizer and uh, you know, a
long time activist for 25 years now. And,
You know, back in the early 2000s in a
nursing home, small nursing home, uh, in
Ohio workers by workers, the workers right to organize
and help them out. Everybody got fired, ran
out of the building bribed threatened cajoled 20 years ago
, right? And that's just one nursing home and
not a profit nursing home. Imagine the power of
a trillion dollar company to kind of rain holy hell
down upon workers. And you know, sort of
just the whole atmosphere of working in a an atmosphere
that was just described, right? It's it's it's
it was a tough election to begin with. I
mean, you know, the workers who started this
union has nothing to be ashamed of because the system
is rigged against them. But here's what we can
do, right? I pray to God that these
workers can win. That the wrecking going on right
now across America with corporate America Starbucks, other work
sites across America, there is a new labor movement
being born, amazon is part of that. We
might not win this, the system is totally rigged
against them. But right now in Congress right there
is the pro act. This pro act would make
, it would be a game changer and give workers
like the best of our workers a chance to organize
a union without going through this hell. And uh
, you know, uh that is what we gotta
do. We gotta, we gotta fight and help
the workers in the best of our organized of course
, but it's a long fight. And uh,
if you know, the system is rigged against them
, what we can do is uh, you know
, help local workers organized unions, but also make
sure federal law changes. So, uh, it's
a fair fight for workers and that, you know
, trillion dollar companies and billionaires can't rig rigged the
system against, you know, working class people,
you know, john, as you mentioned earlier,
um, this rerun election is happening because amazon was
determined to have interfered with the first election and amazon
does have a history of trying to interfere with unionization
has pushed against it. Do you think they have
the resources really quickly before we go to basically push
for another anti union vote on this front? Yeah
, I mean, unfortunately, amazon has almost unlimited
resources to devote to santa union campaign. We saw
that very clearly in the last election and as you
said, it was found guilty of violating the law
last time. Unfortunately, I don't think a great
deal has changed so many of the obstacles that the
union faced last time it will face again this time
. But I do think that these union drives are
tremendously important. I mean, they, they give
people a real education in what actually happens when american
workers try to form unions. And as mike said
, they provide a very self compelling illustration of why
we need to proact or why we need stronger federal
protections for the right to choose a union. Um
, at, particularly at a company like amazon that
has almost unlimited resources with which to fight. Uh
, it's not fighting unions, It's fighting its own
workers efforts to form unions and that's what it's actually
doing. That's the right that it's undermining is the
right of its own workers to have a free choice
on the issue of unionization. Well, thank you
, john Logan, he's the director of Labor and
Employment studies at SAN Francisco State University and Mike Wallace
, who is the national field director of Our Revolution --> .