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    Amazon Labor Fight: Wages May Not Ward Off Union

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    Recent organizing campaigns in the South suggest the company’s wage scale may have left it vulnerable to a union.In making the case against a union at its warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., Amazon has touted its compensation package. The company notes that base pay at the facility, around $15.50 an hour for most rank-and-file workers, is more than twice the local minimum wage, and that it offers comprehensive health insurance and retirement benefits.But to many of Amazon’s Bessemer employees, who are voting this month on whether to unionize, the claims to generosity can ring hollow alongside the demands of the job and local wage rates. The most recent figure for the median wage in greater Birmingham, a metropolitan area of roughly one million people that includes Bessemer, was nearly $3 above Amazon’s pay there, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.“If you go into certain rural areas in the South, where wages are suppressed and there’s no industry, that may seem attractive,” said Joshua Brewer of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, who is the campaign’s lead organizer. “For our folks here in Bessemer and Birmingham, it’s barely enough to keep the lights on. To tote it in front of them like it’s something to be prized is mildly offensive.”It is common for employers facing a union vote to emphasize the generosity of their wages and to suggest that workers could be worse off if they unionize. But the message takes on added resonance in the South, where incomes are lower and jobs with good pay can be harder to find. As a result, organizers say, employers and their surrogates in the region often use such tactics more aggressively.A commercial during a 2017 union campaign at a Boeing plant in South Carolina showed a casino boss urging workers to roll dice at a craps table to make the point that joining a union could put their livelihood at risk. Union campaigns at a Nissan plant in Canton, Miss., and a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tenn., featured similar appeals.The catch is that wages at these plants tended to be substantially higher than the typical wage in their areas, reinforcing workers’ sense that they had something valuable to lose.Veteran production workers made $23.50 an hour at the Volkswagen plant in 2019, the year of the most recent campaign there. The comparable figure was $23 at Boeing’s South Carolina facility when workers voted on a union and $26 at Nissan’s Mississippi plant during the vote there, also in 2017. The union lost in all three cases.“The global manufacturing companies took more steps to pre-empt unionization by offering better pay,” Richard Bensinger, a former organizing director for the United Automobile Workers and the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said in an email.Mr. Bensinger, who was involved in the Nissan and Volkswagen campaigns and is helping workers organize at other Amazon facilities, held up Mercedes-Benz as a telling example. The U.A.W. tried to organize the company’s plant in Vance, Ala., about 25 miles from Bessemer, for several years during the last decade. But it could never quite get a majority of workers to sign cards, Mr. Bensinger said, partly because wages at the plant were so high — $28 an hour for veteran workers, and even more today.“They paid U.A.W. scale to try to keep the U.A.W. out,” Mr. Bensinger said. (Mercedes, like other automakers, also used temporary workers whom it paid far less.)By contrast, unions have been successful when companies have held down wages. During the first half the 2010s, workers unionized at several auto parts suppliers in Alabama and elsewhere in the South, often citing low pay and benefits as the impetus.In 2015, employees at Commercial Vehicle Group in Piedmont, Ala., which made seats for trucks, voted to join the U.A.W. by a roughly two-to-one ratio. Workers at the plant complained of wages that started as low as $9.70 an hour for temporary workers and topped out at $15.80 for full-time employees. The company laid off many of the workers when it later consolidated its operations.“Workers always say this: It’s about respect, recognition,” said Gary Casteel, the U.A.W.’s former second-ranking official, who helped oversee much of its organizing in the South. “That’s not the case. It is about the money. Everybody wants to get paid more.”Darryl Richardson, an Amazon worker in Alabama, has seen the power of a union to raise wages.Lynsey Weatherspoon for The New York TimesDarryl Richardson, an Amazon employee in Alabama, knows firsthand the catalyzing effect of low wages. In 2012, he was part of a group of workers that voted overwhelmingly to unionize at Faurecia Interior Systems in Cottondale, Ala., which made seats for the nearby Mercedes plant.Mr. Richardson said that he had made around $12.50 an hour when he started at the plant but that, thanks to the union, his hourly pay had nearly doubled by the time he left in 2019, after the plant lost its contract with Mercedes. He said several of his co-workers at Faurecia were now working at Amazon and had seen the power of a union to raise wages.“From Faurecia to Amazon, it’s a big pay difference,” said Mr. Richardson, who now makes $15.55.Heather Knox, an Amazon spokeswoman, said that workers in Bessemer were eligible for raises every six months and that they had received a $2-an-hour bonus during much of last spring. Full-time rank-and-file employees received $300 bonuses during the holiday season and $500 last June. The company also provides significant tuition reimbursement for employees who take classes in certain fields.Some workers at the Bessemer facility, which opened just as Covid-19 was bearing down last March, regard the pay as more than adequate, especially younger employees.“I feel like it is fair,” said Roderick Crocton, 24, who previously made $11.25 as an overnight stocker at a local retailer. “In my old job, I lived in my apartment, never got to go anywhere, paid my bills. Today I’m able to go out and experience being in the city.”But other workers emphasize that pay at Amazon isn’t particularly high for the Birmingham area, even if the pandemic has reduced their job options. An Amazon employee named Clint, a union backer who declined to give his last name for fear of retaliation, said he had stood to make about $40,000 a year installing satellite dishes before the pandemic left him unemployed. He said he made his finances work partly by living with his mother.The retail workers’ union said it represented employees at nearby warehouses where pay is $18 to $21 an hour, including an ice cream facility and a grocery warehouse not far from Amazon.At a plant owned by NFI Group, a Canadian bus manufacturer, about an hour east of Birmingham, hourly pay for rank-and-file workers ranges from $14.79 to $23.31, according to the company.A survey of about 100 workers at the NFI plant by Emily Erickson, a professor at Alabama A&M University, found that white workers earned about $3 an hour more than Black workers on average. One former employee who currently works for a labor group in the area, Charles Crooms, said this made it more difficult to persuade white workers to join a union organizing effort. (The company said all employees with the same job grade and tenure were paid the same.)Workers and organizers said the dissatisfaction over wages at the Amazon warehouse was heightened by the vast wealth of Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder.The Amazon warehouse in Bessemer opened just as Covid-19 was bearing down last March.Bob Miller for The New York Times“He’s one of the richest men in the world, yet you treat employees like scavengers,” said Jennifer Bates, an Amazon employee who earned more in her previous job at a pipe factory but joined Amazon hoping it would provide an opportunity to grow.Ms. Bates was mystified that the company was urging Congress to match its pay efforts by raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour. “It looks to me like Amazon is admitting it’s only paying a minimum wage, and this is not a minimum-wage job,” she said. Amazon has said its starting wage is higher than $15 an hour in most of the country.Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the retail workers’ union, noted that Mr. Bezos could have given each of Amazon’s more than one million global employees last year a bonus larger than the annual pay of a warehouse worker just from the wealth he accumulated during the pandemic.All of which raises a question: Why didn’t Amazon, which regards unions as a threat, follow the example of Nissan and Mercedes and pay its Alabama employees more as a way to pre-empt a union?The company did not respond to a request to address that question.Mr. Appelbaum, the union president, said the company had underestimated its workers.“I think they took it for granted that we’d be out there for a few days leafleting, then go away,” he said. “They didn’t believe there was any possibility that we’d be able to get enough cards from employees to get to an election.” More

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    How Amazon Crushes Unions

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    Amazon’s warehouse in Chester, Va., where a union effort tried to organize about 30 facilities technicians in 2014 and 2015.Credit…Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesHow Amazon Crushes UnionsIn a secret settlement in Virginia, Amazon swore off threatening and intimidating workers. As the company confronts increased labor unrest, its tactics are under scrutiny.Amazon’s warehouse in Chester, Va., where a union effort tried to organize about 30 facilities technicians in 2014 and 2015.Credit…Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesSupported byContinue reading the main storyMarch 16, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETRICHMOND, Va. — Five years ago, Amazon was compelled to post a “notice to employees” on the break-room walls of a warehouse in east-central Virginia.The notice was printed simply, in just two colors, and crammed with words. But for any worker who bothered to look closely, it was a remarkable declaration. Amazon listed 22 forms of behavior it said it would disavow, each beginning in capital letters: “WE WILL NOT.”“We will not threaten you with the loss of your job” if you are a union supporter, Amazon wrote, according to a photo of the notice reviewed by The New York Times. “We will not interrogate you” about the union or “engage in surveillance of you” while you participate in union activities. “We will not threaten you with unspecified reprisals” because you are a union supporter. We will not threaten to “get” union supporters.Amazon posted the list after the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers accused it of doing those very things during a two-year-long push to unionize 30 facilities technicians at the warehouse in Chester, just south of Richmond. While Amazon did not admit to violations of labor laws, the company promised in a settlement with federal regulators to tell workers that it would rigorously obey the rules in the future.The employee notice and failed union effort, which have not previously been reported, are suddenly relevant as Amazon confronts increasing labor unrest in the United States. Over two decades, as the internet retailer mushroomed from a virtual bookstore into a $1.5 trillion behemoth, it forcefully — and successfully — resisted employee efforts to organize. Some workers in recent years agitated for change in Staten Island, Chicago, Sacramento and Minnesota, but the impact was negligible.Bill Hough Jr., a machinist at the Chester warehouse who led the union drive. Amazon fired him in 2016.Credit…Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesIn an employee notice, Amazon listed behavior it said it would disavow.The arrival of the coronavirus last year changed that. It turned Amazon into an essential resource for millions stuck at home and redefined the company’s relationship with its warehouse workers. Like many service industry employees, they were vulnerable to the virus. As society locked down, they were also less able to simply move on if they had issues with the job.Now Amazon faces a union vote at a warehouse in Bessemer, Ala. — the largest and most viable U.S. labor challenge in its history. Nearly 6,000 workers have until March 29 to decide whether to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. A labor victory could energize workers in other U.S. communities, where Amazon has more than 800 warehouses employing more than 500,000 people.“This is happening in the toughest state, with the toughest company, at the toughest moment,” said Janice Fine, a professor of labor studies at Rutgers University. “If the union can prevail given those three facts, it will send a message that Amazon is organizable everywhere.”Even if the union does not prevail, “the history of unions is always about failing forward,” she said. “Workers trying, workers losing, workers trying again.”The effort in Chester, which The Times reconstructed with documents from regulators and the machinists’ union, as well as interviews with former facilities technicians at the warehouse and union officials, offers one of the fullest pictures of what encourages Amazon workers to open the door to a union — and what techniques the company uses to slam the door and nail it shut.The employee notice was a hollow victory for workers. The National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that negotiated the settlement with Amazon, has no power to impose monetary penalties. Its enforcement remedies are few and weak, which means its ability to restrain anti-union employers from breaking the law is limited. The settlement was not publicized, so there were not even any public relations benefits.Amazon was the real winner. There have been no further attempts at a union in Chester.The tactics that Amazon used in Chester are surfacing elsewhere. The retail workers union said Amazon was trying to surveil employees in Bessemer and even changed a traffic signal to prevent organizers from approaching warehouse workers as they left the site. Last month, the New York attorney general said in a lawsuit that Amazon had retaliated against employees who tried to protest its pandemic safety measures as inadequate.Amazon declined to say whether it had complied with labor laws during the union drive in Chester in 2014 and 2015. In a statement, it said it was “compliant with the National Labor Relations Act in 2016” when it issued the employee notice, and “we continue to be compliant today.” It added in a different statement that it didn’t believe the union push in Alabama “represents the majority of our employees’ views.”The labor board declined to comment.The Chester settlement notice mentions one worker by name: Bill Hough Jr., a machinist who led the union drive. The notice said Amazon had issued a warning to Mr. Hough that he was on the verge of being fired. Amazon said it would rescind the warning.Six months later, in August 2016, Amazon fired him anyway.Mr. Hough (pronounced Huff) was in a hospital having knee surgery when Amazon called and said he had used up his medical leave. Since he couldn’t do his job, he said he was told, this was the end of the line.“There was no mercy, even after what they had done to me,” Mr. Hough, now 56, said. “That’s Amazon. If you can’t give 110 percent, you’re done.”Amazon declined to comment on Mr. Hough.No ConstraintsA truck at the warehouse in Chester. Amazon has been fending off attempts to unionize since at least 1999. Credit…Carlos Bernate for The New York TimesAmazon was founded on notions of speed, efficiency and hard work — lots of hard work. Placing his first help wanted ad in 1994, Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, said he wanted engineers who could do their job “in about one-third the time that most competent people think possible.”Amazon managers openly warned recruits that if they liked things comfortable, this would be a difficult, perhaps impossible, job. For customer service representatives, it was difficult to keep up, according to media accounts and labor organizers. Overtime was mandatory. Supervisors sent emails with subject headings like “YOU CAN SLEEP WHEN YOU’RE DEAD.”In 1999, the reps, who numbered about 400, were targeted by a grass-roots group affiliated with the Communications Workers of America. Amazon mounted an all-out defense.If workers became anything less than docile, managers were told, it was a sign there could be union activity. Tipoffs included “hushed conversations” and “small group huddles breaking up in silence on the approach of the supervisor,” as well as increased complaints, growing aggressiveness and dawdling in the bathroom.Amazon was in sync with the larger culture. Unions were considered relics of the industrial past. Disruption was a virtue.“Twenty years ago, if you asked whether the government or workers should be able to put any constraints on companies, the answer always was ‘No constraints,’” said Marcus Courtney, a labor organizer on the 1999 Amazon campaign. “If companies wanted to push people 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, hats off to them.”When the dot-com bubble burst in 2000, Amazon lost some of its glow. For a time, its very existence was in question.This caused problems for the activists as well. The company reorganized and closed the customer service center, though Amazon said there was no connection with the union drive. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union and the Prewitt Organizing Fund, an independent group, made no inroads organizing Amazon’s 5,000 warehouse workers.A decade later, in 2011, came a low point in Amazon’s labor history. The Morning Call newspaper in Allentown, Pa., revealed that Amazon was hiring paramedics and ambulances during summer heat waves at a local warehouse. Workers who collapsed were removed with stretchers and wheelchairs and taken to hospitals.Amazon installed air conditioning but otherwise was undaunted. After the Great Recession in 2008, there was no lack of demand for its jobs — and no united protest about working conditions. In Europe, where unions are stronger, there were sporadic strikes. In the United States, isolated warehouse walkouts drew no more than a handful of workers.The MachinistMr. Hough said he had felt pressured to cut corners to keep conveyor belts running.Credit…Ruth Fremson for The New York TimesMr. Hough worked as an industrial machinist at a Reynolds aluminum mill in Richmond for 24 years. He once saw a worker lose four fingers when a steel roller fell unexpectedly. Incidents like that made a deep impression on him: Never approach equipment casually.Reynolds closed the plant in the Great Recession, when Mr. Hough was in his mid-40s. Being in the machinists guild cushioned the blow, but he needed another job. After a long spell of unemployment, he joined Amazon in 2013.The Chester warehouse, the size of several aircraft carriers, had opened a year earlier, part of Amazon’s multibillion-dollar push to put fulfillment centers everywhere. Mr. Hough worked on the conveyor belts bringing in the goods.At first, he received generally good marks. “He has a great attitude and does not participate in negative comments or situations,” Amazon said in a March 2014 performance review. “He gets along with all the other technicians.”But Mr. Hough said he had felt pressured to cut corners to keep the belts running. Amazon prided itself on getting purchases to customers quickly, and when conveyor belts were down that mission was in jeopardy. He once protested restarting a belt while he was still working on it.“Quit your bitching,” Mr. Hough said his manager, Bryon Frye, had told him, twice.“That sent me down the wrong road,” Mr. Hough said.Bryon Frye’s tweet about Amazon union campaigns.Credit…TwitterMr. Frye, who declined to comment, no longer works for Amazon. On Twitter last month, he responded to a news story that said Amazon was hiring former F.B.I. agents to deal with worker activism, counterfeiting and antitrust issues.“This doesn’t shock me,” he wrote. “They do some wild things.”The Union DriveMembers of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union distributed literature outside the Alabama warehouse where Amazon workers are voting on whether to join the union.Credit…Bob Miller for The New York TimesIn 2014, Mr. Hough and five other technicians approached the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. A unionization effort was already taking place with the technicians at an Amazon warehouse in Middletown, Del. If either succeeded, it would be the first for Amazon.The elections for a union would be conducted by the National Labor Relations Board. The first step was to measure interest. At least 18 of the 30 technicians in Chester returned cards indicating their willingness to be represented by the union.“It was not too difficult to sign people up,” said Russell Wade, a union organizer there. “But once the word leaked out to Amazon, they put the afterburners on, as employers do. Then the workers started losing interest. Amazon spent oodles of money to scare the hell out of employees.”The board scheduled an election for March 4, 2015. A simple majority of votes cast would establish union representation.Amazon brought in an Employee Resource Center team — basically, its human resources department — to reverse any momentum. A former technician at the warehouse, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation, said the reps on the team followed workers around, pretending to be friendly but only seeking to know their position on the union drive.If safety was the biggest issue for the technicians, there were also concerns over pay equity — machinists said they were paid different amounts for doing the same job — and about their lack of control over their fate. Part of Mr. Hough’s pitch was that a union would make management less arbitrary.“One guy, all I remember is his name was Bob,” he said. “They paged Bob to the control room, and the next thing I saw was Bob coming down the steps. He had taken off his work vest. I said, ‘Bob, where are you going?’ He said, ‘They terminated me.’ I didn’t ask why. That’s the way it was.”Several technicians said they recalled being told at a meeting, “You vote for a union, every one of you will be looking for a job tomorrow.” At another, the most outspoken union supporters were described as “a cancer and a disease to Amazon and the facility,” according to Mr. Hough and a union memo. (In a filing to the labor board, Amazon said it had investigated the incident and “concluded that it could not be substantiated.”)Mr. Hough, a cancer survivor, said the reference had offended him. He declined to attend another meeting run by that manager. He said he had known in any case what she was going to say: that the union was canceling the election because it thought it would lose. Amazon had triumphed.On March 30, 2015, Mr. Hough received a written warning from Mr. Frye, his manager.“Your behavior has been called out by peers/leaders as having a negative impact,” it said. Included under “insubordination” was a refusal to attend the Amazon victory announcement. Another incident, Amazon said, could result in termination.The machinists union filed a complaint with the labor board in July 2015 alleging unfair labor practices by Amazon, including surveilling, threatening and “informing employees that it would be futile to vote for union representation.” Mr. Hough spent eight hours that summer giving his testimony. While labor activists and unions generally consider the board to be heavily tilted in favor of employers, union officials said a formal protest would at least show Chester technicians that someone was fighting for them.In early 2016, Amazon settled with the board. The main thrust of the two-page settlement was that Amazon would post an employee notice promising good behavior while admitting nothing.Wilma Liebman, a member of the labor board from 1997 to 2011, examined the employee notice at the request of The Times. “What is unusual to my eye is how extensive Amazon’s pledges were, and how specific,” she said. “While the company did not have to admit guilt, this list offers a picture of what likely was going on.”Amazon was required to post the notice “in all places where notices to employees are customarily posted” in Chester for 60 days, the labor board said.From the machinists union’s point of view, it wasn’t much of a punishment.“This posting was basically a slap on the wrist for the violations that Amazon committed, which included lies, coercion, threats and intimidation,” said Vinny Addeo, the union’s director of organizing.Another reason for filing an unfair labor practices claim was that the union hoped to restart its efforts with a potentially chastened company. But most of the employees who supported the Chester drive quit.“They were intimidated,” Mr. Wade, the union organizer, said.Mr. Hough was beset by ill health during his years at Amazon. Radiation treatment for his cancer prompted several strokes. His wife, Susan, had health problems, too. Mr. Hough said he wondered how much the unionization struggle contributed to their problems. He added that he didn’t know whom to trust.After leaving Amazon, Mr. Hough began driving trucks, at first long haul and later a dump truck. It paid less, but he said he was at peace.Maximum Green TimesNearly 6,000 workers in Bessemer have until March 29 to decide whether to join the union.Credit…Wes Frazer for The New York TimesWhen Amazon vanquished the 2014 union drive in Delaware, the retailer said it was a victory for “open lines of direct communication between managers and associates.”One place Amazon developed that direct communication was in its warehouse bathrooms under what it called its “inSTALLments” program. The inSTALLments were informational sheets that offered, for instance, factoids about Mr. Bezos, the timing of meetings and random warnings, such as this one about unpaid time off: “If you go negative, your employment status will be reviewed for termination.”Amazon’s “inSTALLments” program used postings in warehouse bathrooms to communicate with workers.Credit…The New York TimesAs the union drive heated up in Bessemer, the direct communication naturally was about that. “Where will your dues go?” Amazon asked in one stall posting, which circulated on social media. Another proclaimed: “Unions can’t. We can.”Amazon also set up a website to tell workers that they would have to skip dinner and school supplies to pay their union dues.In December, a pro-union group discovered, Amazon asked county officials to increase “maximum green times” on the warehouse stoplight to clear the parking lot faster. This made it difficult for union canvassers to approach potential voters as they left work. Amazon declined to comment.Last month, President Biden weighed in.“There should be no intimidation, no coercion, no threats, no anti-union propaganda,” he said in a video that never mentioned Amazon but referred to “workers in Alabama” deciding whether to organize a union. “You know, every worker should have a free and fair choice to join a union. The law guarantees that choice.”Owning 25 HatsMr. Hough, in an interview before the pandemic, said part of him wanted to forget what had happened at Amazon. Why dwell on defeat? He threw away all the papers from the union drive. He never saw the employee notice because he was recovering from a stroke.But he has not forgiven the retailer.“You’re only going to step on me one time,” he said, sitting in his home in the outskirts of Richmond.Amazon’s customers just don’t know how miserable a job there can be, he suggested.“I guarantee you, if their child had to work there, they’d think twice before purchasing things,” he said.Ms. Hough, sitting next to him, had a bleaker view.“The customers don’t care about unions. They don’t care about the workers. They just want their packages,” she said.As if on cue, their son, Brody, came in. He was 20, an appliance technician. His mother told him there was a package for him on his bed. It was from Amazon, a fishing hat. It cost $25, Brody said, half the price on the manufacturer’s website.“I order from Amazon anything I can find that is cheaper,” Brody said. That adds up to a lot of hats, about 25. “I’ve never worked for Amazon. I can’t hate them,” he said.Ms. Hough looked at her husband. “If your own son doesn’t care,” she asked, not unkindly, “how are you going to get the American public to care?”The pandemic helped change that, bringing safety issues at Amazon to the forefront. In a Feb. 16 suit against Amazon, the New York attorney general, Letitia James, said the company continued last year to track and discipline employees based on their productivity rates. That meant workers had limited time to protect themselves from the virus. The suit said Amazon retaliated against those who complained, sending a “chilling message” to all its workers. Amazon has denied the allegations.Last week, regional Canadian authorities also ordered thousands of workers at an Amazon warehouse near Toronto to quarantine themselves, effectively closing the facility. Some 240 workers recently tested positive for the virus there, a government spokeswoman said, even as the rate of infection in the area fell. Amazon said it was appealing the decision.Alabama is now the big test. Mr. Hough worries the union supporters will be crushed.“They will fall to threats or think, ‘I won’t have a job, Amazon will replace me,’” he said by phone this month. “When a company can do things to you in secret, it’s real hard to withstand.”Still, he added, “I’m hoping for the best. More power to them.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Jing Fong Workers Protest Restaurant Closing

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    Jing Fong Workers Protest Restaurant’s ClosingAmr Alfiky/The New York TimesThe “Save Jing Fong! Protect Chinatown!” chants were heard up and down Canal Street on Tuesday. Over 70 people gathered to protest the closing of the largest restaurant in the area — and one of few unionized restaurants in the city. Here’s what happened → More

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    Amazon Workers’ Union Drive Reaches Far Beyond Alabama

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAmazon Workers’ Union Drive Reaches Far Beyond AlabamaA vote on whether to form a union at the e-commerce giant’s warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., has become a labor showdown, drawing the attention of N.F.L. players, and the White House.The votes on whether to form a union at the Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer, Ala., need to be in by the end of the month.Credit…Bob Miller for The New York TimesMichael Corkery and March 2, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETPlayers from the National Football League were among the first to voice their support. Then came Stacey Abrams, the Democratic star who helped turn Georgia blue in the 2020 election. The actor Danny Glover traveled to Bessemer, Ala., for a news conference last week, where he invoked the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s pro-union leanings in urging workers at Amazon’s warehouse there to organize. Tina Fey has weighed in, and so has Senator Bernie Sanders.Then on Sunday, President Biden issued a resounding declaration of solidarity with the workers now voting on whether to form a union at Amazon’s Bessemer warehouse, without mentioning the company by name. Posted to his official Twitter account, his video was one of the most forceful statements in support of unionizing by an American president in recent memory.“Every worker should have a free and fair choice to join a union,” Mr. Biden said.A unionizing campaign that had deliberately stayed under the radar for months has in recent days blossomed into a star-studded showdown to influence the workers. On one side is the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union and its many pro-labor allies in the worlds of politics, sports and Hollywood. On the other is one of the world’s dominant companies, an e-commerce behemoth that has warded off previous unionizing efforts at its U.S. facilities over its more than 25-year history.The attention is turning this union vote into a referendum not just on working conditions at the Bessemer warehouse, which employs 5,800, but on the plight of low-wage employees and workers of color in particular. Many of the employees in the Alabama warehouse are Black, a fact that the union organizers have highlighted in their campaign seeking to link the vote to the struggle for civil rights in the South.The retail workers union has a long history of organizing Black workers in the poultry and food production industries, helping them gain basic benefits like paid time off and safety protections and a means to economic security. The union is portraying its efforts in Bessemer as part of that legacy.“This is an organizing campaign in the right-to-work South during the pandemic at one of the largest companies in the world,” said Benjamin Sachs, a professor of labor and industry at Harvard Law School. “The significance of a union victory there really couldn’t be overstated.”The warehouse workers began voting by mail on Feb. 8 and the ballots are due at the end of this month. A union can form if a majority of the votes cast favor such a move.Amazon has posted signs in the facility and held meetings with workers, urging them not to unionize.Credit…Wes Frazer for The New York TimesAmazon’s countercampaign, both inside the warehouse and on a national stage, has zeroed in on pure economics: that its starting wage is $15 an hour, plus benefits. That is far more than its competitors in Alabama, where the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.“It’s important that employees understand the facts of joining a union,” Heather Knox, an Amazon spokeswoman, said in a statement. “We will provide education about that and the election process so they can make an informed decision. If the union vote passes, it will impact everyone at the site and it’s important associates understand what that means for them and their day-to-day life working at Amazon.” The company, which went on a huge hiring spree last year as homebound customers sent its sales to a record $386 billion, recorded more than $22 billion in profit.In Alabama, some workers are growing weary of the process. One employee recently posted on Facebook: “This union stuff getting on my nerves. Let it be March 30th already!!!”The situation is getting testy, with union leaders accusing Amazon of a series of “union-busting” tactics.The company has posted signs across the warehouse, next to hand sanitizing stations and even in bathroom stalls. It sends regular texts and emails, pointing out the problems with unions. It posts photos of workers in Bessemer on the internal company app saying how much they love Amazon.At certain training sessions, company representatives have pointed out the cost of union dues. When some workers have asked pointed questions in the meetings, the Amazon representatives followed up with them at their work stations re-emphasizing the downsides of unions, employees and organizers say. The meetings stopped once the voting started, but the signs are still up, said Jennifer Bates, a pro-union worker in the warehouse.In this charged atmosphere, even routine things have become suspect. The union has raised questions about the changing of the timing of a traffic light near the warehouse where labor organizers try to talk to the workers as they are stopped in their vehicles while leaving the facility.Amazon did ask county officials in mid-December to change the light’s timing, though there is no evidence in the county records that the change was made to thwart the union. “Traffic for Amazon is backing up around shift change,” the public records stated as the reason the county altered the light.Amazon regularly navigates traffic concerns around its facilities, and wasting unpaid time in congested parking lots is a frequent gripe of Amazon workers in Facebook groups.But the retail workers’ union president, Stuart Appelbaum, questioned the timing of the request in Bessemer, coming as it did at the height of the organizing. “When the light was red we could answer questions and have a brief conversation with workers,” he said.Last week, the union questioned an offer the company made to the Alabama warehouse workers to pay them at least $1,000 if they quit by late March. Mr. Appelbaum accused the company of trying to entice employees to leave before the vote ended.“They are trying to remove the most likely union supporters from their work force by bribing them to leave and give up their vote,” he said in an interview.But “The Offer,” as it’s known among employees, was the same that Amazon made to workers at all of its warehouses around the country. It is an annual program that lets the company reduce its head count after the peak holiday shopping season without layoffs. It has been in place since at least 2014, when Jeff Bezos wrote about it in a shareholder letter.“Once a year, we offer to pay our associates to quit,” Mr. Bezos said at the time. “In the long run, an employee staying somewhere they don’t want to be isn’t healthy for the employee or the company.”Mr. Appelbaum was not swayed. He said he believed that Amazon had chosen to make the offer across all of its warehouses when it did in order to help eliminate possible “yes” votes in Bessemer.President Biden stopped short of urging the Amazon workers to unionize, but his statement instantly raised the stakes of an already momentous campaign.“Let me be really clear,” Mr. Biden said. “It’s not up to me to decide whether anyone should join a union. But let me be even more clear: It’s not up to an employer to decide that, either. The choice to join a union is up to the workers. Full stop.”He added, “Workers in Alabama and all across America are voting on whether to organize a union in their workplace. This is vitally important — a vitally important choice.” And it is one, he said, that should be made without intimidation or threats.Workers around the country, including Seattle, have expressed support for the union vote in Alabama.Credit…Jason Redmond/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDespite the union’s suspicions, it has not filed any formal complaints with the National Labor Relations Board, Mr. Appelbaum said. Typically, unions can raise objections to a company’s tactics before an election and the labor board can step in.If a complaint were to be filed, the labor board could potentially determine that the election is invalid because of Amazon’s actions. But after working for months to build support inside and outside the Amazon warehouse, the last thing the union wants is for the labor board to intervene and rule that the election must be held again. The voting has already been taking place in Bessemer for nearly a month.Mr. Sachs, of Harvard Law School, said that despite Mr. Biden’s admonishments of companies’ interfering in elections, the current labor law does allow Amazon to hold certain mandatory meetings with workers to discuss why they shouldn’t unionize and enables the company to post anti-union messages around the workplace.“It is very helpful that the president is calling out these tactics, but what we need is a new labor law to stop companies from interfering,” he said.It is rare for such a large union election to be held by mail. Over Amazon’s objections, the labor board required a mail-in vote after determining that federal election monitors would be at risk of contracting Covid-19 if they had to travel to Bessemer to oversee in-person voting.By pushing back aggressively against the union, Amazon risks angering Democrats in Washington, many of whom are already calling for more antitrust scrutiny of big tech companies, whose businesses have grown even larger in the pandemic. Amazon has mounted a public campaign supporting legislation to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour, buying prominent ads in The New York Times, The Washington Post and other publications.In his video on Sunday, President Biden specifically mentioned how unions can help “Black and brown workers” and vulnerable workers struggling during the economic crisis brought on by the pandemic.Ms. Bates, 48, one of the leaders of the union drive, started working at the Bessemer warehouse in May.She said she felt insulted by some of Amazon’s anti-union efforts, particularly the company’s statements to the staff that they would be required to pay nearly $500 in union dues every year. Because Alabama is a right-to-work state, there is no such requirement that a union member pay dues.“It angers me a little bit because I feel like they know the truth and they won’t tell the truth and are taking advantage because they know employees come from a community that is looked on as Black and low income,” said Ms. Bates, who is Black. “It felt really horrible that you would stand there and mislead people intentionally. Give them the facts and let them decide.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    John J. Sweeney, Crusading Labor Leader, Is Dead at 86

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyJohn J. Sweeney, Crusading Labor Leader, Is Dead at 86As head of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., he embraced immigrants, women, minority groups and low-wage workers in an effort to reverse organized labor’s long decline.John J. Sweeney in 2005 after being re-elected president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. in Chicago. He was a force in helping Democrats, including Barack Obama, win elections.Credit…Charles Rex Arbogast/Associated PressFeb. 2, 2021Updated 2:10 p.m. ETJohn J. Sweeney, a New York union researcher who climbed to the pinnacle of the American labor movement in the 1990s, leading the A.F.L.-C.I.O. for 14 years through an era of fading union membership but rising political influence, died on Monday at his home in Bethesda, Md. He was 86.Carolyn Bobb, an A.F.L.-C.I.O. spokeswoman, confirmed the death. She did not specify the cause.As president, from 1995 to 2009, of the nation’s largest labor federation — 56 unions with 10 million members near the end of his tenure — Mr. Sweeney flexed labor’s political muscle with thousands of volunteers and helped elect Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008. Over the years, he also helped elect Democrats to seats in Congress, to governorships and to state legislatures across the country.His tougher task, a quest to reinvigorate and diversify the faltering labor movement itself, had the weight of history pushing against him.For decades in the 20th century, labor had not welcomed women, African-Americans, Latinos or Asian-Americans, often engaging in blatantly discriminatory tactics to preserve the dominance of white men in the workplace. Substantial but uneven gains had been achieved since the civil rights era of the 1960s, when unions began removing “whites only” clauses from their constitutions and bylaws.But Mr. Sweeney, still facing lopsided demographics, plotted a sea change. He crusaded to bring women and minorities into the fold, often in leadership posts; made alliances with civil rights groups, students, college professors and the clergy; and championed low-wage workers, shifting away from the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s traditional emphasis on protecting the best-paid union jobs.Mr. Sweeney, center, after speaking at a union solidarity rally in Chicago in 2005. At right was his deputy, Linda Chavez-Thompson, executive vice president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Behind him, at right, was his eventual successor, Richard L. Trumka. Credit…Brian Kersey/Associated PressIn Mr. Sweeney’s campaign for the federation presidency, his running mate, for the newly created post of executive vice president, was Linda Chavez-Thompson, a Texas sharecropper’s daughter. She was the first minority group member ever elected to organized labor’s top executive ranks.The 1995 balloting itself was unique: It was the first contested election in the history of the federation, which had been created in 1955 by a merger of the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations after a long estrangement.A signature Sweeney initiative encouraged the recruitment of thousands of immigrants to his unions. Many members had long been hostile to undocumented workers, accusing them of stealing union jobs and dragging down wage scales. Mr. Sweeney rebuked such talk as discriminatory and called for justice that included better treatment for underpaid immigrants and a path to citizenship for those in the United States illegally.Critics contended that Mr. Sweeney’s policies were locked in a liberal past, deploying mid-20th century civil rights and blue-collar union strategies to organize 21st century workers with internet skills. Mr. Sweeney rejected that claim, just as he had rebuffed corporations that moved jobs overseas and denounced the hostilities that many young white-collar workers voiced toward old-line unions.In a labor movement that had been declining since 1979, when union membership peaked at 21 million, Mr. Sweeney prodded his constituent unions to greatly increase spending on organizing. He often said that his first priority was to reverse the long slide and substantially expand labor’s rank-and-file.Mr. Sweeney in 2005 at New York University in Manhattan during a protest by graduate assistants in a contract dispute. One of his priorities  was to expand labor’s rank-and-file.Credit…James Estrin/The New York TimesBut by 2009, when he stepped down, his vision of a dramatic unionization surge comparable to those of the late-Depression 1930s and the postwar ’40s had failed to materialize. In fact, overall union membership in America had fallen on his watch to about 12 percent from 15 percent of the workforce, a trend that has since continued, according to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics.“Based on the optimism that supporters of the labor movement felt in 1995 when he was elected, I think it’s hard not to be disappointed with the results,” Richard W. Hurd, a professor of labor relations at Cornell University, told The New York Times in 2009. “How much of that you can trace back to John Sweeney is a whole other question.”In a departing interview with The Times in his Washington office — looking across Lafayette Park to the White House, where he had conferred with President Bill Clinton in the late 1990s and with Mr. Obama more recently — Mr. Sweeney spoke optimistically in the face of the Great Recession, which had been underway for more than a year and had already forced thousands of layoffs, further winnowing union ranks.“I think the recession is going to drive people to the conclusion that they can’t resolve their problems by themselves, and they have to look to organizing,” he said. And, noting that his father had been a unionized New York City bus driver, he drew a lesson from childhood.“Because of the union, my father got things like vacation days or a raise in wages,” he said. “But my mother, who worked as a domestic, had nobody. It taught me from a young age the difference between workers who are organized and workers who were by themselves.”Mr. Sweeney, left, was the incoming president of the Service Employees International Union in June 1980 when Senator Edward M. Kennedy (waving) spoke to its convention in New York. Mr. Kennedy was seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. At right in the foreground was the outgoing union president, George Hardy.Credit…Associated PressJohn Joseph Sweeney was born in the Bronx on May 5, 1934, to James and Agnes Sweeney, Irish-Catholic immigrants whose struggles in America had shaped John’s social perceptions from an early age. The boy had accompanied his father to many union meetings, where he learned of class and workplace inequalities and of union efforts to improve wages and working conditions.He attended St. Barnabas Elementary School and graduated from Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx in 1952. Coming of age, he resolved to find a future in organized labor. He worked as a gravedigger and building porter (and joined his first union) to pay his way through Iona College, a Catholic school in New Rochelle, N.Y., where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1956.He worked briefly as a clerk for IBM but took a sharp pay cut to become a researcher for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union in Manhattan. He met Thomas R. Donahue, a union rep for the Building Service Employees International Union, Local 32B, who persuaded him in 1960 to join his union as a contract director. Mr. Sweeney would face Mr. Donahue in a run for labor’s top job 35 years later.In 1962, Mr. Sweeney married Maureen Power, a schoolteacher. She survives him, along with their children, John Jr. and Patricia Sweeney; two sisters, Cathy Hammill and Peggy King; and a granddaughter.The building employees union was one of the most progressive of its day, representing 40,000 porters, doormen and maintenance workers in 5,000 commercial and residential buildings in New York City. Its contracts guaranteed pay raises, medical coverage, college scholarships for members’ children and requirements that employers hire and promote workers without regard to race, creed or color.Mr. Sweeney rose through the ranks, and in 1976 was elected president of Local 32B of the renamed Service Employees International Union. Soon his 45,000 members struck thousands of buildings for 17 days and won major wage and benefit increases. He later merged Local 32B with Local 32J, representing janitors, and in 1979 struck again for contract improvements.In 1980, he was elected president of the 625,000-member national S.E.I.U. and, moving his base to Washington, began merging with unions of public employees and workers in office jobs, health care and food services. He pushed for stronger federal laws for health and safety, and spent heavily to organize new members. By 1995, he represented 1.1 million union members and was a national power in the labor movement.Labor was at a crossroads. Years of rank-and-file frustration with Lane Kirkland, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. since 1979, boiled over in a revolt of union presidents in 1995. Mr. Kirkland, whose internationalist vision of labor had made him a hero to Poland’s Solidarity movement but had left him unmoved, even hostile, to proposed reforms for unions at home, was forced to resign.The 1995 election pitted Mr. Sweeney against Mr. Donahue, his old friend from Local 32B, who had risen to secretary-treasurer of the federation and was Mr. Kirkland’s heir apparent. But Mr. Donahue’s ties to Mr. Kirkland forced him to defend the status quo, and Mr. Sweeney’s progressive calls for growth and change won the presidency with 57 percent of the delegates, representing 7.2 million members.President Barack Obama presenting Mr. Sweeney with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010. Mr. Sweeney’s successor said, “John viewed his leadership as a spiritual calling, a divine act of solidarity in a world plagued by distance and division.”Credit…Charles Dharapak/Associated PressHe was re-elected to four more terms of two to four years each, the last time in 2005, when he broke a pledge not to remain in office beyond age 70. He retired in 2009, at 75, and was succeeded by Richard L. Trumka, his longtime secretary-treasurer and a former president of the United Mine Workers.In a statement posted on the A.F.L.-C.I.O.’s website on Monday, Mr. Trumka said of Mr. Sweeney: “He was guided into unionism by his Catholic faith, and not a single day passed by when he didn’t put the needs of working people first. John viewed his leadership as a spiritual calling, a divine act of solidarity in a world plagued by distance and division.”Mr. Sweeney wrote a memoir, “Looking Back, Moving Forward: My Life in the American Labor Movement” (2017), and was the co-author of two books: “America Needs a Raise: Fighting for Economic Security and Social Justice” (1996, with David Kusnet) and “Solutions for the New Workforce: Policies for a New Social Contract” (1989, with Karen Nussbaum).In 2010, President Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. “He revitalized the American labor movement,” Mr. Obama said at a White House ceremony, “emphasizing union organizing and social justice, and was a powerful advocate for America’s workers.”Alex Traub contributed reporting.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Amazon Union Drive Takes Hold in Unlikely Place

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    AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyAmazon Union Drive Takes Hold in Unlikely PlaceWorkers at a warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., are to vote next month on whether to unionize, the largest and most viable effort of its kind involving the technology giant.Union organizers talk to Amazon workers when they are stopped at a traffic light outside the warehouse in Alabama.Credit…Bob Miller for The New York TimesMichael Corkery and Jan. 25, 2021, 5:00 a.m. ETThe largest, most viable effort to unionize Amazon in many years began last summer not in a union stronghold like New York or Michigan, but at a Fairfield Inn outside of Birmingham, in the right-to-work state of Alabama.It was late in the summer and a group of employees from a nearby Amazon warehouse contacted an organizer in the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union. They were fed up, they said, with the way the online retailer tracked their productivity, and wanted to discuss unionizing.As the workers arrived at the hotel, union officials watched the parking lot to make sure they had not been followed.Since that clandestine meeting, the unionizing campaign at Amazon’s fulfillment center in Bessemer, Ala., has moved faster and further than just about anyone has expected. By late December, more than 2,000 workers signed cards indicating they wanted an election, the union said The National Labor Relations Board then determined there was “sufficient” interest in a union election among the warehouse’s roughly 5,800 workers, which is a significant bar to hit with the government agency that oversees the voting process. About a week ago, the board announced that voting by mail would start next month and continue through the end of March.Just getting to an election is an achievement for unions, which have failed for years to break into Amazon. But persuading the workers to actually vote for a union is a bigger challenge. The company has begun to counter organizing efforts by arguing that a union would saddle workers with dues without any guarantee of higher wages or better benefits.This will be the first union election involving the company in the United States since a small group of technical workers at a warehouse in Delaware voted against forming a union in 2014.Much has changed since that vote seven years ago that has allowed organized labor to make inroads with Amazon employees in a place like Alabama.Most of that change had come in the past year during the pandemic, as workers from meatpacking plants to grocery stores have spoken out, often through their unions, about the lack of protective gear or inadequate pay.The retail union has pointed to its success representing workers during the pandemic as a selling point in Bessemer.“The pandemic changed the way many people feel about their employers,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the retail union’s president. “Many workers see the benefit of having a collective voice.”Union organizers are also building their campaign around the themes of the Black Lives Matter movement. Many of the employees at the Amazon warehouse are Black, a fact that the retail union has used to focus on issues of racial equality and empowerment. And leading the organizing effort are about two dozen unionized workers from nearby warehouses and poultry plants, most of whom are also Black.Michael Foster has been helping to organize union support at Amazon’s warehouse. “I am telling them they are part of a movement that is world wide,” he said.Credit…Bob Miller for The New York TimesSince Oct. 20, the poultry workers have been standing outside the Amazon gates every day starting at 4:30 a.m., urging workers stopped at a traffic light to join a union.“I am telling them they are part of a movement that is world wide,” said Michael Foster, a Black organizer in Bessemer, who works in a poultry plant “I want them to know that we are important and we do matter.”Unions have been forming in other unlikely places this year. This month, more than 400 engineers and other workers at Google formed a union, a rare move in the mostly anti-union tech industry. The Google union is meant primarily to bolster employee activism, while the union being proposed at Amazon in Bessemer would eventually be able to negotiate a contract and would seek to influence wages and working conditions.The unionization effort comes as Amazon has embarked on a hiring spree during the pandemic. Amazon now has more than 1.2 million employees globally, up more than 50 percent from a year earlier.But the company has also begun to face pressure from its corporate employees, over climate change and other issues, and from many warehouse workers around the country who have felt emboldened to speak up. The attention is only likely to increase with Amazon on pace to surpass Walmart as the country’s largest employer in a few years.Business & EconomyLatest UpdatesUpdated Jan. 22, 2021, 7:23 p.m. ETThe New Yorker returns an award for its story on a Japanese rent-a-family business.Biden’s top economic adviser warns the economy will be in ‘a much worse place’ without more aid.United Airlines might require its employees to take the vaccine.Success at the Bessemer warehouse, which only opened in March, could inspire workers in the booming e-commerce industry more broadly, said Nelson Lichtenstein, a labor historian at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “If you can do it in Alabama, we can do it here in Southern California for sure,” he said. “It would have a huge ripple effect.”In a statement, Heather Knox, an Amazon spokeswoman, said the company did not believe that the union “represents the majority of our employees’ views,” adding, “Our employees choose to work at Amazon because we offer some of the best jobs available everywhere we hire, and we encourage anyone to compare our total compensation package, health benefits and workplace environment to any other company with similar jobs.”The company created a website that suggests that the union’s dues — which could total about $9.25 a week for a full-time employee — will leave workers with less money to pay for school supplies.“Why not save the money and get the books, gifts and things you want?” the website says.An early version of the website included photos of happy-looking young workers, including the image of a Black man leaping in the air that appeared to be from a free stock photo website. On the site the man and a woman are pictured in an image labeled “excited african-american couple jumping, having fun.”Asked about the site, Amazon called it “educational” and said it “helps employees understand the facts of joining a union.” (As of last Tuesday evening, the company had removed the stock photos including that of the leaping man.)Race has often been at the heart of unionizing campaigns in the South. A century ago, multiracial steel and coal miners unions around Birmingham were a “cockpit of labor militancy,” Mr. Lichtenstein said.In the 1960s, unions — including the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union — gave Black workers a venue to assert their civil rights and gain more equality in the workplace.Organizing was dangerous work. A Black organizer with the retail union in Alabama named Henry Jenkins recalled being shot at and receiving death threats at his home. At one point, a bomb was found in his car outside a church in Selma. Mr. Jenkins died in November 2011 after an illness.The retail union has been influential in the Northeast, where it represents workers at Macy’s and Bloomingdales. But its strength has also grown in the South, particularly in poultry, an industry with traditionally dangerous jobs and a work force that with many Black employees.This spring, the union was active in publicizing deadly virus outbreaks in poultry plants. The union’s mid-South Council president, Randy Hadley, called out the industry for “egregious inaction” in providing basic protections for workers.“Some people do not expect us to succeed,” said Josh Brewer, the lead organizer in Bessemer. “I believe we can do it.”Credit…Bob Miller for The New York TimesBuoyed by its rising profile during the pandemic, the union trained a group of workers to start organizing additional poultry facilities across the South. When the Amazon workers reached out, the union, which had failed to gain traction at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island two years earlier, decided to redirect the poultry workers to the Bessemer warehouse. Unlike in past campaigns, the union decided it would keep mostly quiet during the Alabama organizing drive.“Some people do not expect us to succeed,” said Josh Brewer, who is leading the organizing effort. “I believe we can do it.”On the evening of Oct. 20, two dozen poultry and warehouse workers showed up outside the Amazon gates.Mona Darby, who has spent the past 33 years processing chickens, immediately started approaching the Amazon workers in their cars as they headed home. Ms. Darby grew up in Alabama, one of 18 children. She started working as a housekeeper for local doctors and lawyers when she was 15. But she wanted more stable work, health care and retirement benefits so she got a job in a chicken plant.Today, the starting wages in Alabama’s unionized poultry plants are about the same as those at Amazon. (The average hourly wage at the Bessemer warehouse is $15.30). But Ms. Darby said the union provided her with protections and job security that other jobs lack.“You can pay me $25 an hour, but if you don’t treat me well what’s that money worth?” she said.On that first evening at the Bessemer warehouse, Ms. Darby said a white man approached her and said Amazon didn’t want a union and he didn’t want her “Black ass on our property.”“You are going to see my Black ass out here all day, every day,” Ms. Darby said she responded.Mona Darby, who works at a poultry plant, said the union there provided her with protections and job security.Credit…Bob Miller for The New York TimesMs. Darby said she saw the man remove his name badge before he walked up to her. She told a police officer present what the man said, but he didn’t take notes.The Bessemer police said they had no record of the incident. Amazon declined to comment.Amazon pushed for the union vote to be held in person, despite the coronavirus. The National Labor Relations Board ruled against that.Credit…Bob Miller for The New York TimesOn Dec. 18, lawyers for Amazon and the union gathered on Zoom to discuss how many workers would be part of the potential union.The hearing dragged on for days, as Amazon’s lawyer asked questions in minute detail about the warehouse, until the federal hearing officer eventually cut the testimony short.One issue Amazon has insisted on is that the election be held in person at the warehouse. The company even offered to rent out hotel rooms for the federal election monitors to help them isolate from contracting the virus in an area with an infection rate of 17 percent. The N.L.R.B. ruled against in-person voting on Jan. 15, stating that a company paying for hotel rooms for government employees was not a good idea. On Friday, Amazon asked for a stay of the mail-in election, arguing that infection rates were declining and insisting that voting should take place at the warehouse.Until all the votes are cast, Mr. Foster and the other poultry and warehouse workers are planning to stay outside the Amazon gates. He said some of the Amazon workers were fearful of being seen talking to the organizers at the stop light.On a few occasions, Mr. Foster has said a prayer with workers before the light changes to green.“We want to show them we are not leaving them until this is done,” he said.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Biden Tells OSHA to Issue New Covid-19 Guidance to Employers

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Biden AdministrationliveLatest UpdatesBiden Takes OfficePandemic Response17 Executive Orders SignedAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyBiden Tells OSHA to Issue New Covid-19 Guidance to EmployersUnions, which largely support the new president, had complained that the Trump administration did little to protect workers from the coronavirus.Carolina Sanchez, left, whose husband died after contracting Covid-19 while working at a meatpacking plant, is comforted at a protest outside the Occupational Safety and Health Administration office in Denver last September.Credit…David Zalubowski/Associated PressJan. 21, 2021Updated 6:37 p.m. ETPresident Biden directed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration on Thursday to release new guidance to employers on protecting workers from Covid-19.In one of 10 executive orders that he signed Thursday, the president asked the agency to step up enforcement of existing rules to help stop the spread of the coronavirus in the workplace and to explore issuing a new rule requiring employers to take additional precautions.The other executive orders also relate to the pandemic, including orders directing federal agencies to issue guidance for the reopening of schools and to use their powers to accelerate the production of protective equipment and expand access to testing.Critics accused OSHA, which is part of the Labor Department, of weak oversight under former President Donald J. Trump, especially in the last year, when it relaxed record-keeping and reporting requirements related to Covid-19 cases.Under Mr. Trump, the agency also announced that it would mostly refrain from inspecting workplaces outside of a few high-risk industries like health care and emergency response. And critics complained that its appetite for fining employers was limited. Mr. Biden’s executive order urges the agency to target “the worst violators,” according to a White House fact sheet.Union officials and labor advocacy groups have long pleaded with the agency to issue a rule, known as an emergency temporary standard, laying out steps that employers must take to protect workers from the coronavirus. The agency declined to do so under Mr. Trump, but Mr. Biden supported the approach during the campaign.“We talked about a national standardized strategy for working men and women in this country to function under this cloud of the pandemic,” Rory Gamble, the president of the United Automobile Workers union, said after a meeting with Mr. Biden in mid-November. “He indicated he would do whatever it took.”OSHA’s oversight of the meatpacking industry under Mr. Trump attracted particular scrutiny from labor groups and scholars. A study published in the fall in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences connected between 236,000 and 310,000 Covid-19 cases to livestock processing plants through late July, or between 6 percent and 8 percent of the national total at that point.That figure is roughly 50 times the 0.15 percent of the U.S. population that works in meatpacking plants, according to the study, suggesting that the industry played an outsized role in spreading the illness.The study found that a majority of the Covid-19 cases linked to meatpacking plants had likely originated in the plants and then spread through surrounding communities.The Biden AdministrationLive UpdatesUpdated Jan. 21, 2021, 7:22 p.m. ETFauci offers reassurances on vaccines, but warns that virus variants pose a risk.Biden is invoking the Defense Production Act. Here’s what that means.The No. 2 official at the F.B.I. is departing.Despite the problems identified by the study, the Trump administration did not include meatpacking plants in the category of workplaces that OSHA should regularly inspect. Only a small fraction of the roughly $4 million in coronavirus-related penalties that the agency proposed under Mr. Trump targeted the industry. Fines for any given plant were generally below $30,000.The Labor Department under Mr. Trump said it had assessed the maximum fines allowed under the law. But former OSHA officials have said that the agency can impose bigger fines by citing facilities for multiple violations, which could raise proposed penalties to over $100,000.Even when it did inspect meatpacking plants and propose fines, OSHA rarely required these employers to place workers six feet apart, the distance recommended by its own guidance.During a court case involving a plant in Pennsylvania whose workers complained last year that they were in imminent danger because of the risk of infection, OSHA wrote in a letter on Jan. 12 that it was OK with spacing at the plant, even though some workers were spaced less than six feet apart. Separately, union officials at two other plants where OSHA issued citations said workers continued to stand close to one another after the citations.Debbie Berkowitz, a senior OSHA official during the Obama administration who is now at the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group, said she expected the Biden administration to issue a rule requiring meatpacking facilities to space workers six feet apart and mandating other safety measures, such as providing high-quality masks and improving ventilation and sanitation at their facilities.“OSHA had been sidelined under Trump,” said Ms. Berkowitz. “This is a signal they’re going to play a significant role in mitigating the spread of Covid-19,” she added, alluding to Mr. Biden’s executive order.The Biden administration is likely to revisit a wide variety of labor and employment issues from the Trump era, including a rule that would make it harder for employees of franchises and contractors to recover wages that were improperly withheld from them, and another rule that would likely classify Uber drivers and other gig workers as contractors rather than employees.On Wednesday, the new administration fired the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board, a Senate-confirmed official who has wide latitude over which labor law violations the board pursues. The official, Peter B. Robb, was appointed by Mr. Trump and clashed frequently with unions.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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    Hundreds of Google Employees Unionize, Culminating Years of Activism

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    #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Artificial IntelligenceThe Bot That WritesAre These People Real?Algorithms Against SuicideRobots Without BiasAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyHundreds of Google Employees Unionize, Culminating Years of ActivismThe creation of the union, a rarity in Silicon Valley, follows years of increasing outspokenness by Google workers. Executives have struggled to handle the change.Chewy Shaw, an engineer at Google, at a video meeting with other members of the union’s leadership council. He said a union would keep pressure on management.Credit…Damien Maloney for The New York TimesJan. 4, 2021, 6:00 a.m. ETOAKLAND, Calif. — More than 225 Google engineers and other workers have formed a union, the group revealed on Monday, capping years of growing activism at one of the world’s largest companies and presenting a rare beachhead for labor organizers in staunchly anti-union Silicon Valley.The union’s creation is highly unusual for the tech industry, which has long resisted efforts to organize its largely white-collar work force. It follows increasing demands by employees at Google for policy overhauls on pay, harassment and ethics, and is likely to escalate tensions with top leadership.The new union, called the Alphabet Workers Union after Google’s parent company, Alphabet, was organized in secret for the better part of a year and elected its leadership last month. The group is affiliated with the Communications Workers of America, a union that represents workers in telecommunications and media in the United States and Canada.But unlike a traditional union, which demands that an employer come to the bargaining table to agree on a contract, the Alphabet Workers Union is a so-called minority union that represents a fraction of the company’s more than 260,000 full-time employees and contractors. Workers said it was primarily an effort to give structure and longevity to activism at Google, rather than to negotiate for a contract.Chewy Shaw, an engineer at Google in the San Francisco Bay Area and the vice chair of the union’s leadership council, said the union was a necessary tool to sustain pressure on management so that workers could force changes on workplace issues.“Our goals go beyond the workplace questions of, ‘Are people getting paid enough?’ Our issues are going much broader,” he said. “It is a time where a union is an answer to these problems.”In response, Kara Silverstein, Google’s director of people operations, said: “We’ve always worked hard to create a supportive and rewarding workplace for our work force. Of course, our employees have protected labor rights that we support. But as we’ve always done, we’ll continue engaging directly with all our employees.”The new union is the clearest sign of how thoroughly employee activism has swept through Silicon Valley over the past few years. While software engineers and other tech workers largely kept quiet in the past on societal and political issues, employees at Amazon, Salesforce, Pinterest and others have become more vocal on matters like diversity, pay discrimination and sexual harassment.“Our goals go beyond the workplace questions of, ‘Are people getting paid enough?’” Mr. Shaw said.Credit…Damien Maloney for The New York TimesTimnit Gebru, an artificial intelligence researcher, said Google fired her after she criticized biases in A.I. systems.Credit…Cody O’Loughlin for The New York TimesNowhere have those voices been louder than at Google. In 2018, more than 20,000 employees staged a walkout to protest how the company handled sexual harassment. Others have opposed business decisions that they deemed unethical, such as developing artificial intelligence for the Defense Department and providing technology to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.Even so, unions have not previously gained traction in Silicon Valley. Many tech workers shunned them, arguing that labor groups were focused on issues like wages — not a top concern in the high-earning industry — and were not equipped to address their concerns about ethics and the role of technology in society. Labor organizers also found it difficult to corral the tech companies’ huge workforces, which are scattered around the globe.Only a few small union drives have succeeded in tech in the past. Workers at the crowdfunding site Kickstarter and at the app development platform Glitch won union campaigns last year, and a small group of contractors at a Google office in Pittsburgh unionized in 2019. Thousands of employees at an Amazon warehouse in Alabama are also set to vote on a union in the coming months.“There are those who would want you to believe that organizing in the tech industry is completely impossible,” Sara Steffens, C.W.A.’s secretary-treasurer, said of the new Google union. “If you don’t have unions in the tech industry, what does that mean for our country? That’s one reason, from C.W.A.’s point of view, that we see this as a priority.”Veena Dubal, a law professor at the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, said the Google union was a “powerful experiment” because it brought unionization into a major tech company and skirted barriers that have prevented such organizing.“If it grows — which Google will do everything they can to prevent — it could have huge impacts not just for the workers, but for the broader issues that we are all thinking about in terms of tech power in society,” she said.The union is likely to ratchet up tensions between Google engineers, who work on autonomous cars, artificial intelligence and internet search, and the company’s management. Sundar Pichai, Google’s chief executive, and other executives have tried to come to grips with an increasingly activist work force — but have made missteps.Last month, federal officials said Google had wrongly fired two employees who protested its work with immigration authorities in 2019. Timnit Gebru, a Black woman who is a respected artificial intelligence researcher, also said last month that Google fired her after she criticized the company’s approach to minority hiring and the biases built into A.I. systems. Her departure set off a storm of criticism about Google’s treatment of minority employees.“These companies find it a bone in their throat to even have a small group of people who say, ‘We work at Google and have another point of view,’” said Nelson Lichtenstein, the director of the Center for the Study of Work, Labor and Democracy at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “Google might well succeed in decimating any organization that comes to the floor.”The Alphabet Workers Union, which represents employees in Silicon Valley and cities like Cambridge, Mass., and Seattle, gives protection and resources to workers who join. Those who opt to become members will contribute 1 percent of their total compensation to the union to fund its efforts.Over the past year, the C.W.A. has pushed to unionize white-collar tech workers. (The NewsGuild, a union that represents New York Times employees, is part of C.W.A.) The drive focused initially on employees at video game companies, who often work grueling hours and face layoffs.In late 2019, C.W.A. organizers began meeting with Google employees to discuss a union drive, workers who attended the meetings said. Some employees were receptive and signed cards to officially join the union last summer. In December, the Alphabet Workers Union held elections to select a seven-person executive council.But several Google employees who had previously organized petitions and protests at the company objected to the C.W.A.’s overtures. They said they declined to join because they worried that the effort had sidelined experienced organizers and played down the risks of organizing as it recruited members.Google employees staged a walkout in 2018 to protest how the company handled sexual harassment.Credit…Bebeto Matthews/Associated PressAmr Gaber, a Google software engineer who helped organize the 2018 walkout, said that C.W.A. officials were dismissive of other labor groups that had supported Google workers during a December 2019 phone call with him and others.“They are more concerned about claiming turf than the needs of the workers who were on the phone call,” Mr. Gaber said. “As a long-term labor organizer and brown man, that’s not the type of union I want to build.”The C.W.A. said it was selected by Google workers to help organize the union and had not elbowed their way in. “It’s really the workers who chose,” Ms. Steffens of C.W.A. said.Traditional unions typically enroll a majority of a work force and petition a state or federal labor board like the National Labor Relations Board to hold an election. If they win the vote, they can bargain with their employer on a contract. A minority union allows employees to organize without first winning a formal vote before the N.L.R.B.The C.W.A. has used this model to organize groups in states where it said labor laws are unfavorable, like the Texas State Employees Union and the United Campus Workers in Tennessee.The structure also gives the union the latitude to include Google contractors, who outnumber full-time workers and who would be excluded from a traditional union. Some Google employees have considered establishing a minority or solidarity union for several years, and ride-hailing drivers have formed similar groups.Although they will not be able to negotiate a contract, the Alphabet Workers Union can use other tactics to pressure Google into changing its policies, labor experts said. Minority unions often turn to public pressure campaigns and lobby legislative or regulatory bodies to influence employers.“We’re going to use every tool that we can to use our collective action to protect people who we think are being discriminated against or retaliated against,” Mr. Shaw said.Members cited the recent N.L.R.B. finding on the firing of two employees and the exit of Ms. Gebru, the prominent researcher, as reasons to broaden its membership and publicly step up its efforts.“Google is making it all the more clear why we need this now,” said Auni Ahsan, a software engineer at Google and an at-large member of the union’s executive council. “Sometimes the boss is the best organizer.”AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More