Danny Glover on Amazon Worker's Struggle in Alabama: "Unions Strengthen the
Community"
By Maximillian Alvarez, Jacobin
11 March 21
Legendary actor and longtime progressive activist Danny Glover was recently
in Bessemer, Alabama, supporting workers' efforts to organize a union there.
In an interview, Glover talks about what brought him to Bessemer, his own
labor history, and why the Amazon workers' "struggle has significance for
all of us."
One of the most historic union votes of our era is underway right now:
fifty-eight hundred workers at the Amazon fulfillment center in Bessemer,
Alabama, are currently voting on whether or not to unionize with the Retail,
Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU). If the vote is successful,
workers at the Bessemer facility will become the first unionized Amazon
workforce in the United States. After the National Labor Relations Board
dismissed Amazon's motions to delay the union vote, ballots were sent to
workers in early February, and the vote counting will begin on March 29.
On February 22, world-renowned actor and activist Danny Glover came to
Bessemer to show support for Amazon workers and their struggle to form a
union. The Real News Network's editor-in-chief Maximillian Alvarez sat down
with Glover to talk about why this vote is so significant and how Amazon
workers in Bessemer, most of whom are black, are part of a long tradition of
labor struggle in the South.
The Real News Network will continue its in-depth coverage of the historic
union vote in Bessemer throughout March. You can follow that coverage on
their website, YouTube channel, and podcasts.
MA: What brought you to Alabama to support the workers' struggle here?
DG: The first thing to say is that I was asked to come down. It's a very
important moment for workers - this challenge right here, with a company
that [aside from Walmart] employs more people than any other company in the
country, located here in the South, which is always considered a place where
unions never fared well. And yet, we know there's a history, particularly
here in Alabama, around the miners and smelter workers in the '30s and their
struggle for unionization - and, really, during the whole period of Jim
Crow, particularly with the organizing of black workers. Right here in
Alabama, you had the cotton [mill workers'] strike in the '30s.
So there's a history of resistance here to the oppressive conditions that
people work under. And the South, of course, has its own history, one that
carried the weight of the moral issue around slavery.
So to be here at this particular moment is important. And part of my own
history is in the South: my mother's from the South, rural Georgia, and she
found her way outside. She was able to go to college. She didn't have to
pick cotton in September, because she was going to school in September. And
I come out of a union family, through the US Postal Service - my parents
came to the Postal Service in 1948.
So there are a lot of reasons why I would be here. I'm here in the service
of justice, workers' justice. It seems to be one of my life's purposes,
outside of my work onstage and in front of a screen.
MA: How do you see the struggle for workers' rights and labor justice
connecting to the larger struggle for liberation and dignity?
DG: Since the industrial revolution, organized labor has fought for
fundamental rights, human rights, all over this country and world. And that
fight brings a kind of class consciousness, which is an understanding that
one of the elements that is essential to capital and the ways it expands
itself is: How do you control labor? How do you undermine labor? How do you
de-radicalize labor? And when you're fighting for the basic means of paying
rent or putting food on the table, those are real things.
We're talking about a country where the majority of the population lives in
urban, often crowded areas. It's like that around the world, too. Whether
through forced migrations and enclosure laws, or through voluntary
migrations to find work and everything else, this process of
industrialization drove people to the city and drove them right into the
places where they had to sell their labor in order to survive. It's the same
now. No matter how much technology we have, no matter how much we dismiss
the whole idea of unions, the point is that human beings sell their bodies,
sell themselves, for a price, in order to survive.
You have to place some sort of context or place some sort of structure
around it to make sure that the benefits of what they produce are shared in
some way.
From the robber barons of the late-nineteenth century to now, the objective
was always the same thing: How do we control labor? How do we now exploit
labor? Not just control, exploit it, because their objective is
exploitation. How does that added value that they bring go to them and less
of it goes to the working force, the people who create the value? Because
they, the workers, create the value.
That's why we're here right now - it's that simple. We have the
second-largest employer in this country - and the largest employer in this
area now - and there are fifty-eight hundred workers here who have an
opportunity to say, "We want some sort of safeguards for ourselves. We want
to be in a position where we set out a standard to be able to negotiate
around our wages, benefits, and working conditions."
Right now, Amazon controls all of that. They control the working conditions
the workers work under, the wages that they're paid, and whatever benefits
that they may accrue without any say from the workers themselves. And the
best structure for them to have a say in their lives is unionization. That
was the case two hundred years ago, and it remains the same now.
MA: Let's talk about the significance of this union vote happening here in
the deep South, in Bessemer. Because I think that, to some people who aren't
in the South, to some people who are watching what's happening here from the
outside, it seems like this union drive came out of nowhere. Could you talk
about how this union vote connects to a longer tradition and history of
labor struggle in the South?
DG: Alabama had major deposits of iron ore. During the Civil War, the center
for Southern armaments production was in Selma, Alabama. That's in the
latter part of the wonderful book Hammer and Hoe by Robin D. G. Kelley,
about Southern labor history, the struggle of formerly enslaved Africans
here post-Civil War, post-Reconstruction, and during the period of Jim Crow.
The purpose was always to find various ways to diminish their capacity.
So there is a rich history of labor struggle around here. As I told workers
here, "You're part of a continuum; you're part of an ongoing struggle that
began long before you. That struggle has led you to where you are today, in
your own efforts to build solidarity and in your own demands to build better
working conditions."
Since 85 percent of the Amazon workers in Bessemer are black, unionization
elevates your standard of living and diminishes the wealth gap. We can talk
about the wealth gap in different contexts, but the point is that
unionization has been a platform to raise people from low wages to the
middle class. That is what we're talking about here. We know the dynamics of
poverty within Alabama and how they affect those most underserved, and we
know that all the other kinds of disparities that we have in our society are
a part of this region, too. Unionization is a way of mobilizing - not just
under the rubric of controlling what happens in the workplace, but it's a
way of organizing the community. It elevates the community's sense of
self-purpose in all facets.
Unionization creates citizens, it provides a platform for citizens to take
action. Unions function strengthen the community itself.
MA: What have you been hearing from workers and organizers when you talk to
them about this union vote and about working conditions at Amazon?
DG: It's unbelievable, some of the hardships that they have, the difficult
ways in which they have to maneuver around. There's surveillance on these
workers in Amazon unlike any other kind of surveillance of workers. They're
probably the most watched workers - every single detail of their work is
being watched. And the demands placed on them to get their workload out are
basically unattainable. The periods that they have for breaks, for finding a
restroom, the accommodations there, restroom availability - all those things
are a concern.
And here's the thing: The workers have no control at all. Here's a modern
country where workers have no control and no say in what happens in the
workplace. It's all left to the discretion of the managers themselves. This
system has used technology in ways that we haven't seen before (in creating
Amazon's wealth and business model, and in creating the working conditions
around that model, as well).
MA: This isn't just another union drive, right? Amazon is an international
behemoth. And with the COVID-19 pandemic, Amazon's power has only increased.
Could you talk a bit more about where Amazon as a company is going and why
it's so important for workers to have more of a say in that direction?
DG: Amazon is a global company, and it deals with unions in other places,
like Europe. So the question is always: Why not here, in its home base? Why
are they so resistant to having a union in Amazon's home base? Why are they
using every device available to them to discourage workers from voting to
join the union? [This fight is] significant in that it sets the tone, I
think, for all workers.
The battles that workers win aren't permanent. When you have the unions,
you're empowering the worker. That's the most important thing we have to
say: We're empowering workers. We're empowering the community itself.
Amazon. where are they going to go? They came to Bessemer, a place where,
certainly, work has declined. Because of technology and automation, work has
become unavailable. Good-paying jobs have become unavailable here for many
reasons. Some of the work that would have happened here may have been
outsourced to another country. But in advanced countries, like in Europe,
where there are strong unions, Amazon deals with those unions.
MA: So often, we don't feel like it is our right to have a say in our
working conditions, even though we spend most of our lives at work. Why do
you think that is?
DG: I remember watching something long ago, which said: "The moment that
people begin to structure their lives around their own independence and
self-sufficiency, then they become dangerous. Because they're empowering
themselves."
What happens is that [those in] power - those people who dictate our lives,
shape our lives, shape what we think all the time - they only provide what
they think you need, not what you actually need. Sometimes you gotta catch
yourself in those moments where you can think philosophically about what is
really happening here. Power essentially tries to give us what they want to
give us, not what we need.
MA: How would you convey to people that this is something that they should
care about? And how would you encourage people to get involved in that
struggle like you have?
DG: Philosophically, there are a lot of reasons why I think we should get
involved in making a better world. We can talk about it from the side of
redistributing resources. Amazon has fared very well. I think its value has
doubled or tripled during the pandemic. We all end up selling our labor some
way, and most people are, unfortunately, in a position where they themselves
need and would want more control over what happens in their workplace.
I come down here out of passion for the work itself. What I've always felt
from the beginning is that, for everything I do, if I'm there, it's because
I care. I'm not there for any other reason. If I'm asked to come here, it's
because I care about the issue itself, and the issue is important to me. And
I think it takes that from all of us - to say that this is important to us.
This struggle has significance for all of us who work, for all of us who
feel discriminated against, for all of those who feel powerless at points in
time.
After the twentieth-century fights for labor, for rights, for equality - at
any point in time, the struggle for access and the struggle for a world that
works for all of us is what we need to talk about. And unionization and the
struggle here in Bessemer is important because it has the possibility of not
only changing the lives of these workers here, but also of providing the
courage to foster other battles and other struggles.