I’ve been waiting for years for Americans to stop feeding Amazon. We had a good chance last week. Amazon employees in Bessemer, Alabama had the opportunity to form a union. But it didn’t go well. It wasn’t even close. By a margin of two to one, warehouse workers voted against it.
It’s a really disappointing outcome. But it’s also not surprising. Labor unions are weak in America.
You know who isn’t weak? Amazon.
The world’s largest retailer is one of the most powerful entities on the face of the planet. And their union-busting policies are robust, well-funded, and prodigious.
According to many reports, they paid $10,000 every day to anti-union consultants who created an environment of pervasive secrecy, fear, and misinformation. Amazon spies on its employees and fires labor organizers. Bessemer workers were bombarded with anti-union messages in every private space from bathroom stalls to their personal phones. They forced their employees to attend several hours of anti-union propaganda meetings every week filled with ominous warnings about the “union threat” to their jobs. And they fired organizers, made fake social media accounts, and even changed traffic light patterns. They even flat-out told workers they’d lose their jobs if there was a union—all for the single purpose of discouraging the workers from using their constitutional right to organize with each other.
And it worked.
I knew it would. Story after story has made it incredibly clear that Amazon doesn’t give a flaming hot shit about the well-being of their employees. To an extent that is downright cartoonishly villainous! And they don’t have to, because they won’t face any consequences for it.
No legal consequences, because everything they’ve done is perfectly legal.
And no business consequences, because despite everything, you’re still shopping there.
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