For those of you who don’t know, this is huge news because these kinds of things typically only get filed after the union advocates determine that there is overwhelming support in that workplace. There are 1500 staff in this warehouse . Alabama is one of the most anti-union states in the country.
Absolute support for these workers.
Keep a fucking eye on this. They will need the all the help they can get and we need to watch to see what they will do. If Alabama of all places gets the first unionized Amazons, we will need to take note.
Most of Europe’s amazon warehouse employees are union i think (don’t hold me to this but I think I’ve heard that)
They really aren't, there was just a huge expose about how they were hiring ex cia people to function as pinkerton's in European wearhouses.
My guess is the alabama stuff went public as a direct response to the above expose.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/5dp3yn/amazon-leaked-reports-expose-spying-warehouse-workers-labor-union-environmental-groups-social-movements
This is very important. Amazon's business model is entirely dependent on warehouses, so they can't just shut it down and move. They can't deliver to Alabama driving trucks from warehouses in Mississippi or Georgia. So if they decide to shut it down, it will be a scorched earth tactic
It'd be good if they can align with workers in Mississippi and Georgia, too then. Make Bezos give up on the south entirely. Hell, if we're dreaming one big union with every worker in it would be good too.
IDK I'm kinda worried to they'll just close it. The Bessemer warehouse is my Amazon warehouse. It's new, just activated in 2019. Previously they just ran packages from west Georgia. They've screwed this area before for business convenience: after the Amazon / FedEx contract fallout they just dropped next day shipping for all of us permanently. They told us it would be back when the Bessemer location opened up but that was clearly a lie.
Fuck Bezos.
More likely imo is that Amazon just refuses to sign a contract and hires scabs and/or just waits it out until people either give up, or they can browbeat the union into accepting a shitty deal.
100% Anyway, in the long run it will just lead them seeking more automated ways for their services so no need to rely on humans anymore. Workers are fucked one way or another.
Yep.
Something else that comrades need to know/keep in mind: Amazon, and other companies, pick warehouse locations extremely strategically. They don't just willy-nilly plop one down, or build it based on tax incentives or out of good will to a local fiefdom. The movement of materials is a major part of both cost and schedule for every company, and they spend a lot of money trying to optimize their supply chains. There's a reason why the Longshoremen and the Teamsters have historically been such strong unions (not just because the ILEW are super radical). All of this is even more true in the era of "just in time".
This isn't like a Walmart store where they can just close up shop without missing a beat. Closing down a distribution warehouse has major impacts down the line. Not only do other warehouses (which are staffed at the bare minimum for their projected volume) have to suddenly pick up slack that they weren't allocated for, everything also takes longer to ship, costs more to ship (because you're now missing a path in the network), and makes a lot of people unhappy.
Tl;dr is that your warehouse job exists for a an extremely specific, strategic reason for your employer. They can't just close you down like a retail branch without facing major pain. Use that power!
a big fuck you to all the libs who said the feds should stop sending money to states who voted for trump.
Marxists were purged from every part of American society decades ago.
I agree with you in a lot of respects, and the structure of modern unions is pretty much a mirror of the Democratic Party (an elite full of cushy make-work jobs that ignores or actively spites their membership), but that doesn't make the actual concept of labor organizing "lib".
A lot of unions have been neutered because of the political environment as well. It's not like membership suddenly just became Chuds overnight.
white savior type libs with zero class consciousness.
You just described the entire American "Left". "Folks" who are "totally working class" because they are young and still slumming it with the common folk.
Mostly for the same exact reasons people call vooting lib. Master’s tools etc etc.
If organized labor were "the master's tool", you wouldn't see such swift, decisive action against it from both sides of the aisle. Every single Democrat, and a lot of Republicans, beg you to vote, but outside of Bernie and sometimes Warren, organized labor barely credits a peep.
I agree with you again, but the "embarassingly bad" part is when people completley dismiss massive, already existing labor groups in favor of IWW larping or other bullshit.
Edit: Unions themselves are best seen as tools to build consciousness. They aren't literally going to overthrow the state all by themselves. They're just a concentration of working people arguing for their collective interest and building solidarity.
the act of organizing in America is very liberal and more about writing doner checks and making phone calls than uniting people
Off-topic, but this applies quadrupably to ~direct action~, "mutual aid", and all the other bullshit phraseology that gets tossed around in our circles.
Not sure why you got downvoted either (actually totally sure why) , this has been a great thread.
Not sure why you got downvoted either
Well it’s a bad take and an oversimplification—workers aren’t permanently entered into the category of “lib” by virtue of unionizing, even if the enemy class influences unions and union leadership. There is not “zero class consciousness” at play when workers voluntarily organize in their capacity as workers and against the interests of their bosses, even if the organizers don’t have specifically socialist politics.
Unions are not like the most advanced form of class struggle organization, but they emerged through class struggle as vehicles for that struggle. Unions are still, far and away, the largest working class organizations in the US, and treating them as a one-sided tool for capitalist control ignores the countervailing reasons why workers join unions in the first place.
Socialists can and should orient to unions to spread our ideas and win support. Unlike with say the Democratic Party, it is possible for socialists to win control of the major unions, through elections, on the basis of a class struggle platform .
It’s a crime we don’t have a Minecraft gold react :gold-communist:
:party-sicko: :party-sicko: :party-sicko: :party-sicko: :party-sicko: :party-sicko: :party-sicko: :party-sicko: :party-sicko: :party-sicko:
It's the Party Line
This is first news in months where I'm not depressed as fuck after reading about it.
Lets.Fucking.Go!
:party-blob: :floppy-parrot: :cat-vibing: :crab-party: :party-parrot-mask:
Bessemer is outside of Birmingham, which in living memory was the most union dense city in the country.
The country is center left (like typical european style social democracy) on economic policy but is center right on cultural issues. This is true in every state except for certain segments of CA/NY/ect, where it's the opposite. The problem is that the above cohort isn't a meaningful political block as itself, but the new deal coalition was formed around these sorts of beliefs.
The real problem is the vast power of the right wing media network which is just totally out of control and prevents left wing ideas from ever reaching these people.
It's really depressing how cultural issues are used to destroy the working class
Conservative social views don't have to divide the working class, they didn't for most of American history to at least the degree that the great society and new deal happened.
But something does have to give, and left wingers aren't ever going to do that, but there are definitely a group of people who support stupidpol types stuff for political hackery reasons that don't actually agree with it ideologically.
I'm gay and I'd definitely trade gay marriage for single payer healthcare without question. It's not even a difficult thing for me to say.
I've heard it said that, just based on economic policies they like, the average American is to the left of the average democrat politician.
Well when you get treated like shit for long enough and don’t have many equal paying alternatives to switch to shit like this happens
