The Other David v. Goliath Story In The News.

JFK

EightVille


From a piece titled 'How Two Best Friends Beat Amazon' in today's NY Times by Jodi Kantor and Karen Weise:

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...

{snip}

...In the end, there were more executives — including 11 vice presidents — who were alerted about the protest than workers who attended it. Amazon’s chief counsel, describing Mr. 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. The company fired Mr. Smalls, saying he had violated quarantine rules by attending the walkout.

In dismissing and smearing him, the company relied on the hardball tactics that had driven its dominance of the market. 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...

And here's the really amazing part, Mr. Smalls and friends did this pretty much all on their own:

...Mr. Smalls and his best friend from the warehouse, Derrick Palmer, had set their sights on unionizing after he was forced out. 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...

{snip}

...The union spent $120,000 overall, raised through GoFundMe, according to Mr. Smalls. “We started this with nothing, with two tables, two chairs and a tent,” he recalled. Amazon spent more than $4.3 million just on anti-union consultants nationwide last year, according to federal filings...

Throughout, Amazon did their darndest to squash the workers' efforts, including: calling the mostly African American organizers 'thugs'; having an initial signature drive quashed; monitoring the organizers social media; swamping workers with text messages and in-warehouse admonishments to 'Vote No';  and, sometimes holding up to twenty mandatory meetings with workers per day. 

Yes, you read that correctly - up to twenty mandatory meetings per day.

In the end, this behaviour resulted in a number of National Labor Relations Board rulings against the company that ultimately resulted in the workers being allowed to stay in the warehouse buildings to organize when they were off the clock.

So.

Now that they have lost and their suppressive smear campaigns have proven fruitless, you might be able to guess who the company is thinking about going after in an effort to get the vote overturned:

...“We’re disappointed with the outcome of the election in Staten Island because we believe having a direct relationship with the company is best for our employees,” an Amazon spokesperson said. “We’re evaluating our options, including filing objections based on the inappropriate and undue influence by the NLRB that we and others (including the National Retail Federation and U.S. Chamber of Commerce) witnessed in this election.”...

Because...

When in doubt, round up the usual suspects and go after the regulators.

Or some such neocorporatishtic thing.

_______

Image at the top of the post...From the the union's Go Fund Me page.


.