Joe Biden effectively endorsed continuous trade union efforts at an Amazon facility in the state of Alabama and the e-commerce giant warned that his efforts to stop the ride should involve “no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda.”
Amazon workers have long complained about everything from grueling hours and quotas in exchange for low remuneration to astonishing levels of warehouse injuries, dangerous conditions during the coronavirus pandemic, dystopians workplace supervision, driver tip skimp, en retaliation of especially outspoken employees. Just like for the course, Amazon resisted the work organizers’ work to convince almost 6,000 employees at a distribution center in the majority-black city of Bessemer, Alabama, to vote for entry into the Retail, Wholesale and Retailers’ Union, as well as to organize more general efforts – using techniques commonly used in the American business world , but which with particular zeal by e-commerce titan.
Amazon bombarded workers with anti-union propaganda, sent them pro-management messages, posted job ads for union-breaking experts, and forced them to attend compulsory meetings. In Alabama, Amazon drivers sought to have the position of the National Labor Relationsdid a union vote, as well as trying to get the vote in person during the coronavirus pandemic. Work organizers told the media that workers at the facility were audiences of mandatory anti-union meetings and that managers tried to intimidate workers who were photographed with the information given in the sessions by their work marks. The election nevertheless continues on the terms Amazon try to prevent, is done by means of ballots that will take place counted on March 30. The stakes are high: if workers successfully form Amazon’s first union in Alabama, it’s likely to unleash a tidal wave of union campaigns in other workplaces. A recent nationwide survey shared with Gizmodo showed the vast majority of hundreds of Amazon executives surveyed were in support of founding their own unions.
In a video message posted on Twitter on Sunday about “workers in Alabama,” Biden reiterated his support for unions and said he would keep his “promise” to support the organization’s efforts. He did not name Amazon by name, although there is no doubt as to which employer he is calling.
“You must all remember that the National Labor Relations Act not only said that unions may exist, but that we must encourage unions,” Biden said. ‘Let me be really clear: it is not up to me to decide whether someone should join a trade union. But let me be even clearer: it is also not the employer who has to decide. ”
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‘The choice to join a trade union depends on the workers’ point. Point,Biden continues. ‘Today and for the next few days and weeks, workers in Alabama and across America are voting on whether they want to organize a union in their workplace. This is crucial, an extremely important choice because America is grappling with the deadly pandemic, the economic crisis and the reckoning of race – which reveals the great inequalities that still exist in our country. ”
“And there may be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda,” Biden concluded. ‘No supervisor should confront employees about their union preferences … Every worker should have a free and fair choice to join a union. The law guarantees that choice. And it’s your right, not that of an employer, it’s your right. No employer can take it right away. ”
The New York Times wrote it is ‘unusual’ for presidents to weigh in on specific labor disputes (a sentiment that can only run in one direction, given the last administration’s incessantly hostile attitude towards the labor movement and federal union efforts). The Washington Post writes that refuting Biden is “striking” because Amazon’s senior vice president of global affairs, cry corporate mouthpiece Jay Carney, was the White House press secretary under the administration of Barack Obama and Biden. Carney was undoubtedly spurred on under the expectation that his tenure in the executive could help the company lubricate the wheels in D.C.C.
Faiz Shakir, a former assistant to Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, is the founder of More Perfect Union, one of many labor advocacy groups which prompted Biden to speak out in favor of the Alabama union effort. Shakir told the Post that Biden’s statement was the biggest proof of support for the union that had come from the White House in many years.
“We have not had this aggressive and positive statement from a President of the United States on behalf of workers for decades,” Shakir said. ‘It is monumental that you have a president who is sending a message to workers across the country that if you take the courageous step to start uniting, you will have allies in government, the NLRB and the Labor Department. It means a lot. ”
“This is almost unprecedented in American history,” Erik Loomis, a labor historian at the University of Rhode Island, also told the Post. ‘We have the idea that previous presidents were openly pro-union in the mid-20th century, but that was really not the case. Even [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] never really came out and told workers directly to support a union. ”
While Biden’s support for the Amazon effort is an important development, the damage to the labor movement and institutions such as the NLRB of the Trump era will be undone on a timeline near overnight. The NLRB is controlled by Trump appointments eager to use their power to launch comprehensive violations of workers’ rights, their ability to organize and rules that hold employers accountable.
The new acting general board of Biden administration at the NLRB, Peter Sung Ohr, turned back numerous prescriptions of the Trump era. But pray it yet to act on major labor law reforms such as the proposed law on the protection of the right to organize, which would increase the NLRB’s regulatory authority, and prevent employers from forcing unions to negotiate deadlines and implement pro-governance contracts.