Amazon employees are voting on unionization
www.theblaze.com
Apparently Amazon believes that mail in voting is prone to mass fraud, so they only allow their employees to vote in person.
Hypocrisy much Mr. Left wing Bezos?
Apparently shitty jobs are no longer enough for southerners.
The Birmingham area surrounding the fulfillment center has unusually deep labor roots. Organizers hope that will propel a historic union victory in the South.
www.huffpost.com
BESSEMER, Ala. ― Darryl Richardson took a job on the factory floor at Faurecia Automotive Seating, a seat supplier to Mercedes, in Cottondale, Alabama, in 2011. He soon joined a
successful effort to unionize the plant with the United Auto Workers. Over the following years, his wages climbed from $12.50 per hour to more than $23
Richardson, 51, now works as a “picker” at
Amazon’s year-old fulfillment center in Bessemer, Alabama, hustling around the warehouse to fetch orders headed out to customers. He took a sizable pay cut from his Faurecia days, starting at around $15. The high production quotas surprised him, and he felt he had no recourse if he was disciplined for allegedly not meeting them. He and a handful of other workers began talks with organizers at the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) to see what they might be able to change.
“I know what the union can do,” said Richardson, whose father was a union member at an Alabama roof manufacturer. “I know the union can give you job security. I know the union can make it better for employees. I feel like everybody out there deserves better. Amazon just don’t treat you fair.”
The collective bargaining experience of workers like Richardson helps explain how the most high-profile union campaign in years sprouted among a predominantly Black workforce in a Birmingham suburb. It also tests common — if false — preconceptions about the South and organized labor: that unions in the region are anemic, and that large-scale organizing is borderline impossible.
Workers at Richardson’s facility are now voting to determine whether the RWDSU will represent them. The mail-in election spans seven weeks, concluding at the end of this month. And with nearly 6,000 workers in the proposed bargaining unit, it appears to be the
largest election in two decades under the National Labor Relations Board.
The worker had never been in a union, so Foster explained some of the finer points of collective bargaining, including the concept of termination only for “just cause,” a common feature in union contracts that helps prevent arbitrary firings.
disciplinary warnings at Amazon can seem unfair and arbitrary, and her grandmother told her a union could help.
Looks like shitty management is causing labor to organize. Good for labor.
Amazon likes to compare its warehouse work to the front-facing retail jobs the company is displacing, but in reality the work is probably more similar to meatpacking. In both, workers face similar time pressures and production quotas, not to mention the possibility of
repetitive-motion injuries from performing the same tasks day after day. Meatpacking and warehouse workers often complain they can’t take a reasonable bathroom break without managers griping about efficiency.
It's not always about pay. Don't treat your workers like shit.
While Amazon might pay well compared to fast food, the company’s wages are lower than what workers will find at
plenty of other blue-collar jobs in the area. Many pro-union workers say the pay doesn’t match the workload.
a supervisor said workers should be happy with their pay because Alabama is a cheap place to live. Bates believed the woman had recently come from out of state.
“That was an insult to us who grew up here,” Bates said. “Did you come here to bring economic growth, or did you come here to get cheap labor?”