Support fight to win a union at Amazon in Alabama!
https://themilitant.com/2021/03/13/support-fight-to-win-a-union-at-amazon-in-alabama/
BY SUSAN LAMONT
Vol. 85/No. 11
March 22, 2021
BESSEMER, Ala. — The drive by hundreds of workers at the large Amazon
warehouse and distribution center here to bring in the Retail, Wholesale
and Department Store Union to represent them is going strong.
They face a concerted effort by Amazon bosses to use all their resources
to keep the union out, from mandatory anti-union meetings in the
warehouse to anti-union signs in the bathrooms. The National Labor
Relations Board-run election by mail is set to end March 29. Some 5,800
workers at the distribution center are eligible to vote.
There are important stakes for workers all across the country in this
fight. Workers need unions to organize themselves to meet the attacks of
the employers against our jobs, wages and working conditions. This
battle in Bessemer is one front in an ongoing national class struggle.
“An important and far-ranging discussion is going on among working
people in Alabama — and beyond — about the union-organizing drive now
underway here,” Rachele Fruit, Socialist Workers Party candidate for
Atlanta mayor, told the Militant in Bessemer March 6. “The SWP campaign
across the country has thrown itself behind this fight, and we’re doing
all we can to build support.
“That’s why I’m here this weekend, along with Margaret Trowe, SWP
candidate for mayor of Louisville, Kentucky, and campaign supporters
from both places,” she said. “Workers involved in the organizing drive
need solidarity.
“We’ve met workers of all backgrounds, from young to retirees, from
grocery store workers to coal miners, and many are hoping for a union
victory,” she said. “Some are talking to family members who work at
Amazon about the difference a union can make and why they should vote
‘yes.’”
“I voted ‘yes’ on my union ballot,” Julia Vanderlinden told Fruit, when
she and Louisville SWP campaigner Jacquie Henderson spoke with her March
6 in nearby Hueytown, where many steelworkers and coal miners live. One
thing going for the organizing drive is the long history of union
organizing and struggles in the area. “I learned about unions from my
father, who worked in the coal mines for years. My husband is a miner,”
she said.
JaMiracle Howard, who lives in the same complex as Vanderlinden and also
works at Amazon, told the socialist campaigners that she had decided not
to vote in favor of the union. “Amazon is a much better company than the
one I worked for before, where I was fired for being pregnant,” Howard
said. “Amazon appreciates me.”
“That’s what all the companies tell us,” said SWP campaigner Ned Measel,
who works at Walmart. “But what if something happens? Or a manager
doesn’t like you? Or we need to fight against speedup? A worker alone
can’t confront a giant company as an individual. We need to combine our
forces as workers. It takes solidarity and using the power that only
comes when we act together, that’s what a union is.
“And we have to see ourselves as part of an international class of
workers, the only class that can make a fundamental change to end this
capitalist system, which is the source of the crisis working people
face,” he said.
Howard decided to get an introductory subscription to the Militant and
bought In Defense of the US Working Class. “I want to read that part in
there about the miners and the teachers,” she said, referring to the
series of militant teachers strikes that swept the country in 2018.
Example of Blackjewel miners
In Hueytown, Shea Harper invited Trowe and this worker-correspondent
onto her porch to talk. “I’m so glad you said you weren’t for the
Democrats or Republicans,” she said with a laugh. Her son, Stephen, who
works as a belt repairman at Warrior Met no. 7 mine in Brookwood, came
out and joined us. “I think the union is good, but that doesn’t mean
there aren’t problems,” he said. “The company will do anything to get
the coal out, no matter what it takes. They’ve been firing people. It’s
not right.”
“We learned a lot about what a union really means during the fight of
the Blackjewel miners in 2019,” Trowe said. “There are no union mines
left in Kentucky, but when the Blackjewel company went bankrupt and
stole the miners’ final paychecks, the miners, their families, their
community in Harlan County stood up and said, ‘No!’
“They sat in on the railroad tracks and kept the company from bringing
the coal out. They won solidarity from around the country, including
from Walmart workers in Louisville, where I work. In the end, they got
the money they were owed. Those miners acted and fought like a union.”
“Unions help unite workers and cut across the divisions the bosses try
to foster,” Trowe said. “I’m against any kind of discrimination,” Shea
Harper said, adding she strongly disagrees with the current “liberal”
view that race, not class, is primary and virtually all Caucasian
workers are racist.
“There’s less racism among Caucasian workers now than ever before,” said
Trowe, “because of the gains of the Black-led mass movement that
overthrew Jim Crow segregation, which was especially strong here, and
because the capitalist crisis today pushes us together.”
The Harpers decided to subscribe to the Militant and bought copies of
the Pathfinder titles The Turn to Industry: Forging a Proletarian Party
and Are They Rich Because They’re Smart?
Need unions at Amazon, Walmart
Socialist campaigners Samir Hazboun from Louisville and Lisa Potash from
Atlanta, both Walmart workers, met Sharon Godfrey going door to door in
Hueytown. Godfrey told them she had worked at the Bessemer Walmart for
almost 20 years and became a supervisor, but was forced out of her
position because she refused to write up the cashiers. The fight for a
union at Amazon is a good thing, she said, adding that workers at the
Bessemer Walmart need one too.
She was also interested to hear about the fight of the Blackjewel
miners. “You don’t hear about that kind of win!” Godfrey said. “Not on
the news. We need to get the word out about this kind of stuff. How much
is the subscription?”
She subscribed to the Militant and also bought a copy of Are They Rich
Because They’re Smart?
“We call on working people everywhere to send messages of solidarity and
to build support for this union fight among co-workers, in your
community, in your union local, and anywhere else where you spread the
word about the organizing drive,” Fruit said on the way back to Atlanta.
“And we’re going to use our campaigns to help spread the word.” Messages
of support can be sent to midsouth@xxxxxxxxx.
“The fight that’s being organized here is very important. It has brought
a layer of workers together in the warehouse and inspired workers
elsewhere,” she added. “Even if they don’t win this election, the
pro-union movement will grow and our ability to fight together to
protect our class interests will come out stronger.
“We go back from here better prepared to tell other workers what this
fight is about and what the stakes are for all working people,” she
said. “And to build solidarity.”
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God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to
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