Amazon workers' historic win in Staten Island
Amazon workers' historic win in Staten Island
+ Lessons from Labor History + Home Care Workers Need a Raise + Ginni Thomas & The Plot to Overturn the Election
“We want to thank Jeff Bezos for going to space because while he was up there, we were organizing a union.” — Christian Smalls, co-founder of the Amazon Labor Union
Many exposés, notably this one by the New York Times from June 2021, have shown the brutal conditions workers must endure at Amazon, the country’s second-largest employer. But workers at one of Amazon’s Staten Island warehouses, known as JFK8, have just won an astonishing and historic victory, creating the first-ever union at Amazon. It may herald and spark a desperately needed resurgence of labor organizing in the country. We’ve written previously about how a vibrant labor movement is essential to address not only economic inequality but also to defend multi-racial democracy.
Rank-and-file workers led the drive, without formal sponsorship by a major international union, though with plenty of community and labor support. High turnover at the warehouses makes sustained organizing even harder, but they showed it can be done. It would be hard to script a more classic David versus Goliath battle. The company uses its vast wealth to finance coercive anti-union campaigns (so much so that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ordered a new election at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, which—as of April 3rd—appears to have narrowly gone against the union, although more than four hundred challenged ballots could still change the outcome.) And another critical battle is just weeks away: A unionization vote among workers at Amazon’s Staten Island shipping center LDJ5 is due to start on April 25, and The Amazon Labor Union Solidarity Fund on GoFundMe welcomes donations. There’s a long way to go, but we agree with UNITE HERE President D. Taylor that “The results in both New York and Alabama make one thing clear: there is an exciting future for working people to organize even against the biggest and richest companies with the harshest anti-union campaigns.”
The backdrop for the success in Staten Island includes a historically tight labor market, with unemployment near an all-time low of 3.6%. Not a single Republican voted for the American Rescue Plan passed in March 2021, which released $1.9 trillion and fueled an economy where workers—especially the “essential workers” who were the ostensible heroes of the pandemic—now have leverage for wins like the one we’ve just witnessed.
In this issue, we feature some useful writing about this landmark victory for workers and a few provocative articles about earlier labor upsurges—from the 1930s to the CIO’s Operation Dixie to the work of the IWW—which have important lessons for organizers today. We conclude with a few extra items: a terrific op-ed by Ai-Jen Poo and Ilana Berger about home care workers, Bess Levin’s case for impeaching Clarence Thomas, and reporting from FRONTLINE and ProPublica about the cabal that cooked some of the most virulent disinformation alleging the 2020 election was stolen.
On the Amazon Labor Union Victory
Josefa Velasquez, writing for The City.nyc, profiles two of labor’s newest stars in her article “Meet Christian Smalls and Derrick Palmer, the DIY Duo Behind the Amazon Labor Union’s Guerrilla Bid to Make History.” She describes the “10- and 12-hour shifts of monotonous tasks in a gig that starts at $17 an hour in Staten Island.” Workers spend most of their shifts on their feet. And she notes, citing Christian Smalls, that it is “not out of the ordinary for workers to walk 30 miles a day at JFK8, . . . a 855,000-square foot facility.” But the great strength of the piece, as acclaimed labor reporter Stephen Greenhouse highlighted on Twitter, is its emphasis on the way the Amazon Labor Union won.
Unlike the Amazon workers trying to organize in Bessemer, Ala., who are backed by the RWDSU, ALU is going at it alone, powered by GoFundMe donations, volunteers and pro bono assistance from other organizations.
RWDSU’s initial organizing effort in Bessemer last spring ended in crushing defeat with workers voting to reject unionization 1,798 to 738. Labor watchers have debated the reasons why, from Amazon’s well-funded union avoidance campaign and captive audience meetings, to strategic blunders from the union, including a lack of highly visible pro-union champions.
But Alabama organizers are getting a second chance after federal labor officials found that Amazon interfered with the election, tainting the vote. The deadline for ballots in Bessemer falls on Friday, the same day JFK8’s voting begins.
Organizers in New York who went to Alabama last year say they learned from the initial organizing failure, seeing some “missed opportunities” that cemented their desire to go at it alone rather than partner with an already established union.
“We felt that going the independent route, starting something brand new and worker-led would be the better way to organize Amazon because we know the company,” Smalls said.
Traditional unions, Smalls argued, are “disconnected” from more innovative styles of organizing.
“They like to organize differently than what we’re doing. We’re more out there. You’re not going to find another union president that camps out [e.g., organizing at bus stops] for 10 months,” he added.
Still, the ALU has had some help from the outside.
UNITE HERE, a labor union representing airport, hotel and food service workers, has provided the ALU office space where they can phonebank and take meetings, according to Palmer. The United Food and Commercial Workers International (UFCW), which largely represents workers in the grocery and food processing and packing industry, is chipping in organizers. Eric Millner, a Long Island lawyer who has worked with UFCW in the past, is assisting the Amazon Labor Union on legal matters before the NLRB.
“Other campaigns, they have $4, $5, $6 million on campaigning. We don’t have that. We spent less than $100,000. I have a week-to-week budget,” Smalls says.
The money has gone toward food for workers, propane to fire up the heat lamp, gas and t-shirts. Until a few months ago, the ALU had a tent set up outside of JFK8 where it was distributing breakfast and lunch to incoming and outgoing workers.
“The most we can buy at a time is a couple hundred shirts that cost about $2,000 or $3,000. We spent every single penny we had this week just to get us to the next week,” Smalls said.
Velasquez and Claudia Irizarry Aponte also wrote one of the best pieces on the day of the victory, “Amazon Warehouse Workers Win Historic Union Vote on Staten Island,” which ends with some inspiring quotations from other ALU leaders:
. . . Brett Daniels, the director of organizing for ALU’s worker committee, said the union was prepared for “unionizing anywhere and everywhere that workers want to organize, we have workers all over the country already in communication with us wanting to organize.”
Connor Spence, a 26-year-old worker and a vice president of membership at ALU, agreed.
“I would urge those workers in Alabama to form a union and forget the NLRB process, just start acting like a union because that was our plan,” he said. “Even if we lost, we were still going to build the union as if we won.”
Luis Feliz Leon’s report in Labor Notes, “Amazon Workers in Staten Island Clinch a Historic Victory,” offers more insight into the approach that paid off for the ALU:
. . . neither magic nor luck had anything to do with the union’s victory; it was hardscrabble worker-to-worker organizing that got the goods.
[ALU Vice President Derrick] Palmer has worked as a packer at Amazon’s sprawling warehouse complex for three years. He estimates that out of 100 people in his department, 70 percent were solid yes voters.
“I pretty much flipped my whole department,” he said. “What I’ll do is study a group of friends and go to the leader of the pack. Whatever the leader says, the rest of the group is going to do.”
Fellow ALU organizer Michael Aguilar agreed about the approach. For example, “Cassio [Mendoza] talks to all the Latino workers in the building,” he said.
“I knew that we would win because of Maddie [Wesley],” Aguilar added. “She’s so empathetic, so she can connect with a lot of people in the building. She was one of the key leaders.”
The independent union enlisted the support of volunteers from various unions and community groups to run a phone banking operation. Wesley tallied union support on the phones and in tabling outside the facility; it was during one such tabling that she recruited Aguilar to the organizing effort.
“Our data had about 65 percent support, which obviously has some margin of error because the people who are most likely to talk to us are most likely to be supporters,” said Wesley.
Most of the workers I spoke to didn’t use organizing lingo, but they had clearly mapped the warehouse. “We know in which departments, and on which shifts, we have strong support because of where our organizers are,” Wesley said.
ALU member Justine Medina credited Communist organizer William Z. Foster’s Organizing Methods in the Steel Industry for the group’s organizational acumen and bottom-up organizing approach. She and others on the organizing committee read and discussed it, giving it out to workers to read. (See sidebar.)
AN INSIDE JOB
The worker-led character of the organizing drive gave it credibility. When Amazon tried to portray the union as an outside “third party,” its highly paid consultants’ arguments would fall flat, because workers would take their questions to their ALU co-workers.
Meetings in the break room were decisive, Palmer said: “I was organizing in the break room on my days off like 10 hours a day, giving out food, talking to workers, and giving out information.”
Smalls said he urged co-workers, “Come have a conversation with me. Don’t just go off what you’re hearing from Amazon and the rumors.”
But collective actions were crucial too. “We showed them that we’re fearless,” said Smalls. “We did rallies in front of the building. We showed them, better than we can talk about it.”
Smalls led a walkout in March 2020 to protest the company's failure to keep workers safe from the pandemic. Amazon fired him afterwards, supposedly for violating Covid protocols. Vice reported that the company’s general counsel insulted Smalls in a meeting with top brass, calling him “not smart or articulate.”
These remarks have elevated the charismatic Smalls as the face of the union drive. But asked about the media attention, he points to the collective struggle and emphasizes that the ALU operates on democratic principles, with all decisions voted on. “I’m just the interim president,” he said. “I’m temporary. It’s not my union; it’s the people’s union.”
PLENTY MORE WAREHOUSES
Standing outside in a drizzle of rain Thursday night, he lifted his hand and pointed towards the Brooklyn apartment they’ve turned into their homebase: “That’s all I had was 20 core committee members, and a workers’ committee of over 100 people. We started with about four.”
Asked if ALU would consider affiliating with another union, he said, “I got to be with the people that was with me from day one. We want to stay independent, and it’s better that way. That’s how we got here.”
But, he adds, “whatever anybody is doing against Amazon, shiiiit, they got my support! There’s plenty of [Amazon] buildings. Pick one!”
The Washington Post profile “Meet Chris Smalls, the man who organized Amazon workers in New York” adds some more colorful details about ALU’s organizing.
The Amazon Labor Union, which Smalls formed after he was fired from the company, is not backed by any national union with a depth of resources and connections. Instead, it’s made up almost entirely of current and former Amazon workers with an upstart mentality and an inside view into how Amazon operates. “We had over 20 barbecues, giving out food every single week, every single day, whether it was pizza, chicken, pasta, home-cooked. We all contributed giving out books, literature, giving out free weed because it’s legal,” he said, laughing, on Friday outside the National Labor Relations Board office. “We did whatever it took to connect with those workers to make their daily lives just a little bit easier, a little bit less stressful.”
There’s an amazing 43-tweet thread by Dan Price, the CEO of Gravity Payments, who famously raised his company’s minimum salary to $70,000 a year in 2015 and has seen a tripling of revenue since. Price has compiled much of the best reporting on Amazon in this torrent of outrages.
BreakThrough News was there for the ALU press conference on April 1st and tweeted an excellent video report:
Lessons from Previous Eras of Labor Upsurge
Writing for Convergence, Cody R. Melcher and Michael Goldfield, in “Moments of Rupture: The 1930s and The Great Depression,” explain what we can learn from earlier waves of worker action:
Some of the most important waves of labor upsurge and union growth in the United States can be noted briefly:
What W.E.B Du Bois calls the “general strike” of four million slaves that took place during the U.S. Civil War (1861 – 1865). This is not traditionally regarded as a labor strike, but there is a good argument to be made that it was.
The enormous strike wave, and union upsurge, spurred by the largely successful railroad workers’ strikes and subsequent Knights of Labor organizing throughout the whole country including the U.S. South in the 1870s and 1880s.
The successful national coal miners’ strike of 1897, which encouraged hundreds of thousands of other workers to strike and organize.
The labor upsurge during and after World War I, 1914 to 1920, when union membership climbed from roughly two million to five million.
The period of the 1930s and 1940s, as union membership went from less than three million in 1933 to almost 15 million in 1945 while strikes escalated.
The public sector union upsurge of the 1960s and 1970s, where government unionization went from a tiny amount to almost 40%. This surge was influenced by and bore a complicated relationship with the enormous social movement upsurge of the period, beginning with civil rights and including the movements against the Vietnam War and for women’s equality. . .
One of the most important things that more radical activists did in workplaces during the relatively quiet 1920s and early 1930s, before the big upsurge took place, is commit themselves to long-term in-plant work. More traditional, often conservative, unions and officials tended to show up briefly, either during strikes or organizing campaigns, collect dues money, then leave after the strikes or union drives were defeated. This history of abandonment tended to leave workers demoralized, and resentful of the fact that unions had collected money from them, then absconded. Thus, many unions, when they came back later felt it necessary to initially waive initiation fees and dues until stable organizations were established.
Left-wing, more radical activists, in contrast, tended to remain even after defeats took place, doing the slower, more long-term work of building a core of in-plant activists. In auto, for example, small groups of Communists established groups, secretly putting out in-plant newsletters. They also visited sympathetic workers at home, much like Amazon United workers are doing today. This activity continued throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, even when the prospects for mass organization and strikes seemed small. When the stock market crashed in late 1929, these groups helped organize unemployed workers, often engaging in mass struggles outside the plants.
As employment increased, and militancy and the desire for organization rose in 1933 and 1934, these small groups often took the initiative in organizing their plants. At White Motors in Cleveland, for example, the in-plant group led by Communist Party (CP) member Windham Mortimer successfully organized an early auto workers union. Similar activities took place at the Briggs plant in Detroit. In Flint, Michigan, the center of General Motors auto production, these small groups were the core of organizing for the famous 1936–7 Flint sit-down strike which led to the unionization of the whole company. . .
Especially important for the success of many of the organizing campaigns of the 1930s and 1940s was this active support from important allies. In looking at these earlier struggles, the importance of this “outside” support may seem obvious. Yet, this is something that many unions in the current period avoid, much to their detriment. . . .
Especially important in the successes of that era are the championing of the rights and issues of all workers, especially those who are most oppressed, be they racial, ethnic, gender, religious, or other groups. Those organizations that did this often had the strongest bonds of solidarity. Some of the greatest victories took place where such solidarity was developed. The decline of such stances is one of the major reasons why the labor movement is weak today.
Christian Smalls has attracted a lot of attention, deservedly in our view, for his leadership even as he has also pointed out that the win was a collective endeavor. And it’s a reminder that Black leadership in the labor movement is nothing new. This piece by Peter Cole, “Local 8: Philadelphia’s Interracial Longshoreman’s Union,” highlights the role of one of its prominent black leaders, Ben Flectcher.
The presence of Fletcher, already a member of both the IWW and Socialist Party, no doubt reassured the thousand-plus African Americans that the Wobblies took black equality seriously. Fletcher was born in Philadelphia to parents who had moved up, in the late 19th century, from Virginia and Maryland. Fletcher was a radical, committed to overthrowing the capitalist system that exploited the hard work of the nation’s majority so that a few could amass fortunes. . .
With a foothold on the waterfront, Fletcher and other leaders effectively applied the militant, direct action tactics the Wobblies remain famous for deploying. Over the next decade, Local 8 dominated labor relations because its members proved willing and able to fight, on the job, for better conditions and higher wages. . .
Beyond winning raises and improving work conditions, Local 8 also insisted upon racial and ethnic equality. After its initial strike, the union integrated work gangs as well as meetings, social gatherings, and leadership posts—all unprecedented on the Philadelphia waterfront. Ben Fletcher, meanwhile, became nationally renowned for his speaking abilities and as the Wobblies’ best-known African American member. Though Fletcher was the most famous black Wobbly, a cadre of other African Americans also served in leadership posts in Local 8.
In her Timeline article “Operation Dixie, the most ambitious unionization attempt in the U.S.,” Meagan Day wrote that
Despite a rich history of labor struggle, the South was largely unorganized in the middle of the 20th century. In part this was because employers had taken advantage of racial divisions to pit black and white workers against one another. Many labor historians argue that Jim Crow laws were at their root a method of keeping workers segregated and therefore sowing division, preventing solidarity, and using racism to maintain the class hierarchy. If, for example, white workers threatened to strike in order to improve pay or working conditions, black workers desperate for a job would be brought in to replace them. Since black and white workers didn’t have relationships with one another, they couldn’t form the bond necessary to plan ahead and prevent this from happening, for their mutual benefit.
Another reason the South lacked robust unions was that the labor movement preferred to organize skilled workers over unskilled ones. Starting in the 1890s, the American Federation of Labor (AFL), a powerful umbrella group that brought together most of the major unions, focused mainly on workers with highly technical jobs that required a lot of training and knowledge, like carpenters, metalworkers, and miners. This was strategic on some level — the more irreplaceable the worker, the more power they have to make demands of bosses, demands that can theoretically improve life for the entire working class. But it had consequences: due to entrenched racism and sexism in society, most of the better-paid skilled workers were white men, which meant that black and female workers were left out.
But the CIO was started specifically in response to this oversight. Its goal was “industrial unionism,” which meant organizing an entire industry at once, including both its highly paid skilled workers and its low-paid unskilled ones. The CIO wasn’t reluctant to organize the people who were paid rock-bottom wages to sweep shop floors, pull levers, or pour cement. In fact, they saw organizing these more “expendable” workers as the key to victory for the labor movement.
Enter Operation Dixie. CIO president Philip Murray called it “the most important drive of its kind undertaken by any labor union in the history of this country.” In 1946, it recruited 250 organizers to go into the South and unite the workforce — black and white, skilled and unskilled — under strong unions. The idea was that, once the workers were united, the factory bosses would no longer have the opportunity to use divisions to the detriment of the workers there — or anywhere. . .
The relationship between local business elites and the carceral state was complex and impenetrable in the South, and CIO organizers and the workers they unionized faced similar repression wherever they went. The media would red-bait them, the bosses would stonewall them, the Ku Klux Klan would harass and intimidate them, and the police would arrest and imprison them. The CIO was simply unprepared for the hostility of the Jim Crow South toward any movement that sought equality among blacks and whites, and workers’ rights for all.
The anti-communist persecution of union organizers in the South became so extreme that the CIO caved to pressure and in 1949–50 expelled eleven left-leaning unions. It was an attempt to show the public that the CIO wasn’t in fact communist, but the reality was that left-wing radicals like Koritz were some of the best organizers in the CIO in the 40s. The CIO began to purge its top talent, which may have helped its image but severely hindered its operations on the ground. . .
The South remains largely unorganized, and that reality continues to pose problems for the labor movement nationwide. Since union participation is at an all-time low and labor is in crisis, some have suggested that it’s time for a new Operation Dixie. Many of the obstacles to organizing the South would still remain — segregation, racism, militarized police, fears of socialism and communism — but Winston-Salem [North Carolina, site of a major CIO victory in 1946] showed that it is possible.
Marianne Garneau has a fascinating piece in Organizing Work, “Big Strikes and the Sabotage of the Labor Movement,” arguing that too much focus on large strikes has obscured the critical role of labor militancy on the shop floor.
However, I want to question the narrative that the Big Strike is itself the key to reviving worker militancy, which is exactly the promise being made by all of these figures. I want to argue that the singular focus on the all-out strike has to be understood within a horizon in which we have retreated from shopfloor control over the workplace, to bargaining every few years over wages and benefits. Polemically, I want to argue that the historical context for the emphasis on the Big Strike is the retreat from these fights on the workfloor, which I take to be integral to developing the struggle capacity of the working class.
If you take a look back at the previous peaks of labor militancy that left labor theorists lionize, there was a completely different attitude, unrecognizable today, about what fights needed to be waged and where. Workers then prioritized struggles over the day-to-day control of work and insisted on settling these and other issues on the floor.
In some ways, the arc of 20th century labor history is the displacement of a labor politics that prioritized worker control on the job. A push for big strikes without an at least equally strong emphasis – in practice, not just in rhetoric – on reinvigorating shopfloor struggle is like demanding a wheel without an axle.
A few more things
Ai-jen Poo and Ilana Berger wrote an important op-ed in the New York Times this week: “Many of Us Want to Age at Home. But That Option Is Fading Fast.” In New York State, the paltry pay for home care workers has become a crisis, but Gov. Hochul and lawmakers in Albany have a chance to dramatically improve the lives of the both the majority of seniors who want to age at home and those who care for them.
Home care workers in the state earn $13.20 an hour in most counties — less than fast-food workers. A report by the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Association of New York State found that low pay and lack of basic benefits were driving home care workers in the state away from the profession. Of those who remain in the work force, a majority rely on public assistance. . .
Raising wages would save New York State over $1 billion a year by increasing tax revenue and moving home care workers off government assistance. Additionally, studies suggest that aging adults who receive home care often reduce their inpatient hospital costs — saving states Medicaid dollars by keeping aging adults healthier and out of hospitals.
New York State sets the pay rate for the vast majority of home care workers. Fair Pay for Home Care, a bipartisan spending proposal that includes salary increases for home care workers in the state’s budget, is currently under consideration. In the coming weeks, Gov. Kathy Hochul will decide whether it ends up in the final state budget.
Finally, we offer a couple of pieces about the cabal that attempted to end American democracy and is still trying to do so. Bess Levin at Vanity Fair has you covered if you are looking for a good answer to the question, “Should Clarence Thomas Be Impeached Over Ginni Thomas’s Deranged Text Messages?” (She thinks so.) The excerpt below stood out especially for its connection to our final recommendation of the week.
Midway through the month [of November 2020], [Ginni Thomas] urged [White House Chief of Staff Mark] Meadows to make Sidney Powell—the lawyer who promoted claims like “there is a secret server that all the votes go to where they [are] manipulate[d]”—“the lead and the face” of Trump’s legal team. At one point, Ginni wrote to Meadows: “Sounds like Sidney and her team are getting inundated with evidence of fraud. Make a plan. Release the Kraken and save us from the left taking America down.”
About that “evidence of fraud” . . . FRONTLINE on PBS and ProPublica teamed up this week to release the documentary “The Plot to Overturn the Election,” an outstanding example of shoe-leather reporting that breaks several important stories about Team Trump’s attempted coup. As ProPublica’s announcement says,
Part of the Frontline and ProPublica project focuses on a group that gathered in the weeks after the 2020 election on a South Carolina plantation owned by conservative defamation attorney Lin Wood. Using the property as a temporary headquarters, a team of lawyers and cybersecurity experts gathered and synthesized what they claimed was evidence of election fraud. This group, which included Michael Flynn, the retired three-star Army general and former national security adviser to Trump, and Patrick Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com, [and Trump’s attorney Sidney Powell] became a key originator of the since-discredited idea that foreign communist governments had hacked voting machines made by Dominion Voting Systems. The belief was central to justifying the efforts of Trump and his allies to reverse the results of the election.
The reporting on the group’s activities draws on more than a thousand private emails, photos and videos, hundreds of text messages and dozens of hours of audio recordings, none of which have been previously reported on.
“It was almost like finding a key to understanding, you know, why much of the country believes that the election was stolen,” Clark tells Thompson in the documentary.