“It has to come from within the workplace.” ![]() The future of American unionizing efforts “can’t be about people coming in from the outside with an organizing plan that people have to follow,” said Sara Nelson, head of the flight attendants’ union, in an interview. “I think it’s going to shake up the labor movement and flip the orthodoxy on its head,” said Justine Medina, a box packer and union organizer at JFK8 who had waited with an exuberant crowd in Brooklyn to hear the vote results. The homegrown, low-budget push by their independent Amazon Labor Union outperformed traditional labor organizers who failed at unionizing Amazon from the outside, most recently in Bessemer, Ala. They were buoyed by a tightened labor market, a reckoning over what employers owe their workers and a National Labor Relations Board emboldened under President Biden, which made a key decision in their favor. But JFK8, with 8,000 workers, is one of Amazon’s signature warehouses, its most important pipeline to its most important market.įor all their David-versus-Goliath disadvantages, the Staten Island organizers had the cultural moment on their side. In recent months, a string of Starbucks stores have voted to organize as well. The unionization vote reflects an era of rising worker power. Amazon spent more than $4.3 million just on anti-union consultants nationwide last year, according to federal filings. “We started this with nothing, with two tables, two chairs and a tent,” he recalled. The union spent $120,000 overall, raised through GoFundMe, according to Mr. They set up signs saying “Free Weed and Food.” Palmer brought homemade baked ziti to the site others toted empanadas and West African rice dishes to appeal to immigrant workers. They made TikTok videos to reach workers across the city. Along with a growing band of colleagues - and no affiliation with a national labor organization - the two men spent the past 11 months going up against Amazon, whose 1.1 million workers in the United States make it the country’s second-largest private employer.Īt the bus stop outside the warehouse, a site on Staten Island known as JFK8, they built bonfires to warm colleagues waiting before dawn to go home. Smalls and his best friend from the warehouse, Derrick Palmer, had set their sights on unionizing after he was forced out. The company’s response to his tiny initial protest may haunt it for years to come. But on Friday, he won the first successful unionization effort at any Amazon warehouse in the United States, one of the most significant labor victories in a generation. In dismissing and smearing him, the company relied on the hardball tactics that had driven its dominance of the market. ![]() Smalls, saying he had violated quarantine rules by attending the walkout. Smalls as “not smart, or articulate,” in an email mistakenly sent to more than 1,000 people, recommended making him “the face” of efforts to organize workers. In the end, there were more executives - including 11 vice presidents - who were alerted about the protest than workers who attended it. The company named an “incident commander” and relied on a “Protest Response Playbook” and “Labor Activity Playbook” to ward off “business disruptions,” according to newly released court documents. In the first dark days of the pandemic, as an Amazon worker named Christian Smalls planned a small, panicked walkout over safety conditions at the retailer’s only fulfillment center in New York City, the company quietly mobilized.Īmazon formed a reaction team involving 10 departments, including its Global Intelligence Program, a security group staffed by many military veterans.
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