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I’m watching the vote count LIVE in the NLRB election among Amazon workers in Bessemer, AL. The crush of congressional business is great, but I’m so nervous I can’t tear myself away. @RWDSU @BAmazonUnion
I wonder if many folks realize how huge the odds are against these workers winning their union election.
People may see a lot of sympathetic press about their valiant effort. It’s one thing to watch from afar but quite another to live through an election like this in your own workplace.
The pressure a company like Amazon builds up against you can feel like a 1,000 lb. weight on your chest.
The goal of the company like Amazon in one of these elections is not to win hearts and minds, not to persuade people, not to have a truthful debate about the pros and cons of workers having a union.
(It would be hard for them to win such a debate.)
(It would be hard for them to win such a debate.)
The company’s goal is to create so much pressure, anxiety and fear—and to make workers feel that the pressure will never go away as long as the union is around...
... that workers feel they have no choice but to vote NO, like someone crying uncle when they have been threatened relentlessly for days, weeks and months.
And how does the company accomplish this?
1. By creating a suffocating, all-encompassing cloud of anti-union propaganda that surrounds workers every minute they are on the clock.
1. By creating a suffocating, all-encompassing cloud of anti-union propaganda that surrounds workers every minute they are on the clock.
2. By forcing workers to attend mandatory meetings (upon pain of dismissal if they wish not to attend at any point!).
3. By, at the same time, refusing to allow the workers any access to union organizers or staff on work time at all.
4. By bringing in swarms of anti-union consultants to talk to the workers, advise them, listen to them, cajole them - even in a workplace like Amazon where workers weren’t allowed any time for such discussions about any topic on work time before the campaign broke out.
5. By taking all manner of actions large and small to penalize leaders of the union effort, not so much to hurt them but to make an example of them, to scare others, to make them feel their effort is futile.
6. By delaying and obstructing the process both to allow them more time to campaign against the union and build the pressure cooker, and also to make workers feel powerless and deflated.
7. To “facilitate” turnover and departures to dilute the pro-union vote. (Turnover in this and many Amazon facilities may be as high as 100% annually.)
8. To seem to dominate not only the workers but society at large, leading to more feelings of powerlessness. Here, amazingly, by getting the city or county to change the traffic light at the employee entrance to prevent organizers from chatting with workers...
...and installing a USPS mailbox in the employee parking lot even after the NLRB ruled against the company’s request to install drop boxes because it would be intimidating and unfair.
But, one might say, if the company violates the NLRB’s rules for a fair election, won’t the workers obtain justice in the end?
I know these brave workers and this tough union will battle on, but let’s be clear about the battlefield they’re playing on.
