Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., are going to get a second shot at unionizing, after a National Labor Relations Board official called for a revote after finding that the e-commerce giant improperly interfered in the first election.
It’s a major victory for the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, which was vanquished in the first vote at the warehouse last spring, with workers rejecting unionization by more than 2 to 1. That union and others have been working to crack Amazon, now the United States’ second-largest private employer, which employs nearly 1 million workers at its domestic warehouses.
Getting a second chance at organizing Bessemer workers is “a big deal” for the union, said Rebecca Givan, a labor studies professor at Rutgers University.
“It confirms what workers have been saying,” Givan said, “that Amazon went too far.”
I hope they vote to unionize.
Betty Cracker
I hope they unionize too, but it’s hard to overstate how thoroughly folks down South have been brainwashed against unions.
John Cole
@Betty Cracker: same in wv
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
You mean history’s wurst munsters? “Don’t let union thugs® steal your right to work for subminimum wage!”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Betty Cracker:
Even outside the South. Somebody I once knew in HS claimed that unions weren’t needed anymore. Which is baffling if you’ve ever worked for a living and experienced how many businesses are run.
It doesn’t help that some unions are useless and/or corrupt. I consider my union (UFCW) to be in the category. My local negotiated a new contract this year that saw the minimum hiring wage raised to $11/hr, the wage increase schedule changed to one based on # hours of worked vs a set schedule. IMO, this is still too low. There was a hiring event recently, and hardly anybody showed up. Managers thought a $11 wage was perfectly fine and couldn’t figure out why nobody showed up.
Health insurance premiums are still 100% paid by the company but it’s only offered to full-time employees (not many of those anymore) and people averaging 30 hours or more all year because the ACA requires it.
Oh and they made Veterans Day a paid holiday but only for veterans. I don’t understand why the union didn’t try to make Juneteenth a paid holiday, considering it’s a federal holiday now
I think a lot of people were afraid to strike considering the company closed down a local distribution center when it’s employees rejected a contract. Plus, the union charges “initiation fees” from every paycheck for the first month for every new hire, so I don’t think they mind churn so much
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
I hope they pull it off, but this is Alabama. These people have been fed propaganda all their lives about how unions will ruin their lives. That’s an awful lot for the organizers to overcome. I hope to hell they can though.
Almost Retired
It’s not just the South. There’s a fair amount of irrational anti-union sentiment here in Los Angeles, outside of public employment, the entertainment industry and the ports of LA and Long Beach.
Geminid
I wish the RWDSU success in organizing the Bessemer Amazon facility. That is a very small union, though. I put more hope in the Teamsters’ longterm plan to organize Amazon, a campaign decided upon at a Teamsters convention this year. They will start with Amazon facilities in Canada, then work south. Amazon drivers already see the better deal their Teamster counterparts at UPS have.
debbie
Even so, an awful lot of people are looking for jobs with better working conditions. Maybe the Amazon employees are beginning to realize they could get better working conditions too.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Geminid:
I’m glad you mentioned UPS, because at one point I looked at them and it turns out they really only hire people to work in their warehouses for 14/hr at usually 20/hrs a week. It’s also very grueling work with bad shift times. Being a driver is where the real money is at and that can potentially take years to get a route depending on the hub location.
USPS is also the same. It’s mostly temp positions from what I can tell. New hires are hired for a 365 day appointment and have to be reappointed to continue on in the position. The pay, around $16.50/hr, isn’t horrible and health insurance is offered, but there’s no retirement benefits until you’re converted to career, which again can take years. I’ve also read about horror stories about management at the Post Office and it’s been crappy to work for USPS for many year
Also, the USPS job search website is nightmare to navigate. You can’t even easily narrow down job locations by zip code
Betty Cracker
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You’re right about corruption. It really undermines the whole concept and gives ammunition to the cynical money-grubbers who want to keep all the power in the hands of the owners.
I loved the Fight for $15 movement, which has been effective in a lot of ways. It was grassroots and worker led. I understand that a larger infrastructure can better harness collective power, but it can also dilute the worker connection.
Kay
Bitter and spiteful.
Vance just openly grovels now:
It’s good for us, though.
guachi
All this bad treatment of workers makes me happy I’m military. Health care, retirement, free college, 401k with matching, 30 days vacation from year one.
The current job environment sounds awful. I think I’d hate working almost everywhere.
Geminid
@Kay: Vance and Mandel are two of the creepiest politicians I’ve ever seen. I’m 300 miles away, and they still give me the heebee-jeebees.
I worry, though, about Matt Dolan pulling off a low plurality win. Dolan seems like he would be Tim Ryan’s toughest opponent.
Chetan Murthy
@guachi:
socialist!
Mary G
I am about done with Amazon. The return process I’ve been trying to navigate is a fucking nightmare. The fall from the best consumer service I’ve ever received to the worst has been epic.
ruemara
I hope they see the light. Have to be blunt though, the more conservatives take union jobs, the more precarious it is to have unions be a key Democratic party ally.
WeimarGerman
I really hope the union does well with another vote, but how do you un-poison the well of misinformation that Amazon and others have filled? If they lost that last one 2-1, then even if they change a lot of votes, they still lose by a lot. Or was the “scare” so short-lived that 1/3rd the workers will flip their votes?
RandomMonster
Arbeiter aller Laender, vereinigt euch! Workers of the world, unite!
Yutsano
I hope they succeed here. I also hope VW goes gunning again for a union at the Chattanooga plant again. The corporate culture there just could not understand how the plant workers there could turn down something that is so strong in German labour.
Leto
@guachi:
Matching only if you opted into the new blended system. All new members, post Jan 2018, were automatically enrolled but to get the max benefit they had to max out their contribution at 4%. And considering mil pay sucks to begin with, most junior members don’t have that extra pay to spare to begin with. On top of the fact that the TSP % returns used to sell the program we’re wildly inflated/optimistic, and nowhere near actual real world returns, it’s simply another way the DoD is fucking over its members.
I went through this with my command in 2016 when they were rolling it out. The O-5 through O-7s, along with E-8/9’s, who came to brief us didn’t have any answers to our questions, and from a basic Google search, it looks like they still don’t. DoD is taking the extra money and moving it to weapons systems, as expected.
guachi
The TSP is just an ETF with a really low administrative fee. I put my money into C and S funds (large and small cap US stocks) and made lots, even without matching as I’ve been in long before that existed. The C fund tracks the S&P 500 so the returns are as real world as you can get. I have so much money that when I retire next August I’ll never have to work again.
Leto
@Yutsano: I remember reading, and watching some news programs, about it. The VW auto execs and the German auto unions worked together to make the overall product better, while not tying to fuck each other over all the time. They couldn’t understand the outright hostility to the union because the German auto union didn’t negotiate wages/hours, it was all along the lines of improving manufacturing efficiency/effectiveness. It was similar to the BMW execs/managers experiencing the South Carolina educational system on their manufacturing process: what. The. Absolute. F.
Welcome to America!
Leto
@guachi: so you’re saying you had access to TSP even before the BRS, which is exactly opposite of how it was sold. I mean, doesn’t matter as this is law now. But it’s the same program as the new military housing system, F-35, and JTRS program.
oatler
The staff at my nursing home get no health care. And i found out at Thanksgiving they don’t get time and a half for working holidays. Probably typical of AZ.
Yutsano
Boeing is learning that exact lesson right now. Instead of keeping the 787 as a split manufacture between SC and Everett, they decided they wanted to break the union and move everything to North Charleston. The result? They haven’t moved a single plane since May. They are sticking to their guns right now but the IAM is making them choke on their stupidity.
Chetan Murthy
@oatler:
I know this is just “welcome to America, SUCKAS!” but it still shocks the conscience.
Chetan Murthy
@Yutsano: From the linked article, it seems yet more quality-control problems. This time, with a subcontractor-of-a-subcontractor …. hoocoodanode?
I do not regret selling my Boeing stock around the time of the first 737MAX accidents: certainly I would never feel safe boarding a Boeing jet — not anymore. Of course I’m sure Boeing will do fine, b/c they’re a
national championdefense contractor and that $$ don’t ever dry up.Yutsano
@Chetan Murthy: I will say this re: the 737MAX*: after the two crashes it has been the most scrutinized plane in the world. Its safety record now is pretty damn amazing. Most Boeing planes are made by union shops in Washington. I feel totally good getting on anything Boeing that is built up here.
EDIT: I have no idea how that extra slash got in there. Edit almost didn’t work for me for a moment either.
WeimarGerman
@Chetan Murthy: employees of UnitedHealth Group have one of the shittiest high deductible plans around. At one, all-employee conference a few years ago when Steve Hemsley was still CEO, one newly acquired employee had the cajones to ask why the plan options were so poor. Steve calmly inhaled and without missing a beat said we offer you the same wonderful plans that all our customers get. f you Brute.
Chetan Murthy
@WeimarGerman: The shocking part is not that they offer their workers shitty plans, but that a health care company with frontline health care workers doesn’t make coverage part of the job . I mean, if these workers get sick, they can sicken the company’s customers.
But no matter: I am fully aware that they DGAF about their customers’ health, either.
Chetan Murthy
@Yutsano:
This might be true. But:
But no matter: I literally haven’t flown in >2yr, and the next time will be overseas, hence much-more-likely Airbus. And really, almost of the US is UGTR at this point, so no need to imagine visiting it.
ETA: I liken being sufficiently knowledgeable to discern where a plane was built, to being in-the-know enough to trade individual stocks in my retirement portfolio. I don’t want to do that, and so I just buy indexes. Similarly with planes.
Geoduck
@Chetan Murthy: UGTR? A Google search indicates that’s “You Got That Right”, which doesn’t seem to make sense in context.
Chetan Murthy
@Geoduck: UnGovernable Tribal Region.
JWR
O/T but lol! Rep. Nancy Mace was on Amanpour & Co tonight, and Amanpour asked Mace about her statement on Fox News that natural immunity is 27x more effective against Covid than vaccines. Mace said that there actually was a study in September out of Israel with 700k subjects that really did say just that, and then she went on some weird tangent about natural immunity and vaccines not being mutually exclusive before her side of the split screen suddenly went black. Damn liberal media!
Procopius
@Betty Cracker: It’s not only that, although that is there. Amazon has clearly put the word out that they might very well shut down the warehouse/”fulfilment” center if the union wins. [Family blog] Bezos would be happy to spend the money to beat the union.
Procopius
@Chetan Murthy: Heh. You remind me of a time when I was at a military clinic in Germany for some minor thing. For whatever reason a doctor passing me in the hallway said, “This is what socialized medicin is like.” I honestly thought it was great, I have no idea what he was on about. I presume he grew up rich.
Betty
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It seems the rank and file in some unions are finally taking back their power. All for the best.
barbequebob
@guachi: Yes regarding TSP. The returns depend on how you allocate yourself among the fund options offered. I use the recommendations of TSP Pilot, for which I pay $150/year. It has been fairly conservative lately, with 40-50 % in Treasury Bonds and the rest stocks and corporate bonds. My 12 month return as of 9/30/21 was over 10%.
jonas
@Yutsano:
Good interview yesterday on (iirc) Here & Now on NPR with the reporter who wrote the book on Boeing and its fuckups with the 737 Max — he basically said the problem was a corporate culture brought in by a bunch of former Jack Welch acolytes from GE in the 90s that started making everything about cost-cutting and “shareholder value” and less about minor details like good engineering and safety (two things, incidentally, that their annoying unions are always going on about). They’re trying desperately to unshit the bed at this point, but its not going well. Airbus has pretty much scooped them on everything for the next 20 years.
jonas
Good on CNN for pulling the plug on ignorant-ass misinformation. If such a study actually exists — and given that Israel’s entire population is about 9 million I seriously doubt 8% of the whole country participated — it probably compared natural immunity to *no* vaccine, and if it found that natural immunity was 27 *times* more effective than even vaccines, it’s bullshit on its face.
JWR
@jonas: Very late reply, but it wasn’t CNN, it was Amanpour & Co on PBS. But Mace had just given her non-Fox answer about masks and vaccines and social distancing when Amanpour hit her with the Fox clip that’s “all over the internet”, and Mace had just started defending her 27x comment, (and I’ll bet you’re right about the study), when someone pulled the plug.