ALU Newsletter #13: Ain't No Stopping Us Now
3/3/2022 update from the Amazon Labor Union in Staten Island
 |
We’re on the move. Just two weeks after officially winning our first NLRB petition for election and setting our JFK8 election date for March 25-30, the ALU has already won our second petition for an election at LDJ5. More details about that election will follow after the NLRB hearing in a couple of weeks. Soon enough, we will have union elections at all four of the Staten Island facilities, and then at warehouses all over the country. Amazon workers everywhere are realizing what we are worth, what we should expect and demand, and what collective power we have to make the necessary changes to our workplaces.
Lauren Kaori Gurley @LaurenKGurley
NEW: @amazonlabor tells me that LDJ5, an 2nd Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, just been approved by the NLRB to hold a union election This Is 3rd Amazon warehouse in the US to qualify for a union election.LDJ5 is a sortation center w/ ~1500 workers according to internal roster
We’re putting ourselves together, we’re polishing up our act. Now is a critical time to help out the ALU campaign with phone banking, door knocking, flyer distribution, event support, and more, as we are in the heat of the campaign to win our first union election for the workers at JFK8, followed shortly by our second election for the workers at LDJ5. If you want to get involved in the ALU’s historic campaign for worker empowerment at Amazon, please sign up right now in our Action Portal!
If you’re an Amazon worker at Staten Island, you can get involved in our Sunday meetings, weekly meals, break room occupations, and other events. Email info@amazonlaborunion.org with your shift and phone number, and we’ll connect you with a coworker in your department for more information about how to participate.
Come out to the Vote Yes Potluck this Saturday, March 5, in the JFK8 3rd floor main break room! (Day Shift 1 PM – 3 PM, Night Shift 11 PM – 1 AM). We’ll be talking about the election, the importance of the campaign, the benefits of the union, the demands shared by the workers, the lies of the management, and the excitement of our impending victory for worker power. Bring food, bring questions, and bring friends!
There's been so many things that’s held us down, but now it looks like things are finally coming around. Amazon management is terrified by the enthusiastic worker support for the ALU—despite the millions of dollars they’ve been spending on high-priced union-busting consultants, lawyers, and propaganda—and now their opposition tactics have reached a new level of desperation. Last Wednesday afternoon, Director of Operations Felipe Santos called the NYPD to arrest ALU President Chris Smalls for “trespassing,” because he was at JFK8 giving four large trays of food to a colleague for our weekly union lunch.
Before Chris had a chance to return to his car and leave, over a dozen NYPD officers pulled up and began to harass him, along with ALU worker-organizers Brett Daniels and Jason Anthony. The police assaulted Jason, who has a disability, causing him both physical harm and mental distress, and then arrested all three ALU members and detained them at the precinct station. This is the second time that the NYPD has arrested Brett at the urging of the Amazon bosses, after a scandalous incident of police harassment in November at the ALU tent by the bus stop.
www.FelipeDropTheCharges.com
We are calling on Felipe Santos to immediately drop all charges and apologize to the ALU organizers whom he illegally retaliated against in the midst of a union election campaign. We have filed Unfair Labor Practice charges against Amazon with the NLRB regarding this clear abuse of authority and assault on free and fair elections—now one of 18 open ULP cases filed against Amazon in Staten Island since our ALU campaign began last April. Amazon bosses keep on breaking the law, and somehow ALU worker-organizers keep on getting arrested for it! But we’ll just keep on keeping on, marching forward towards victory.
(Sign the change.org petition: Felipe Santos, Drop All Charges and Apologize to Arrested ALU Organizers)
If you’ve ever been held down before, I know you’ll refuse to be held down any more. No amount of police harassment, HR warnings, or management discipline can stop us from organizing with our coworkers to defend our rights and dignity. Just a few days after the arrests, the ALU held a rally of solidarity between Amazon and Starbucks union efforts at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. ALU members called out the abuse and retaliation by Amazon management, and the constant police presence used to stifle our rights to organize as workers—to stop us from winning the union recognition that police officers themselves already enjoy.
No amount of Amazon misinformation and fearmongering by union-busting consultants, HR stooges, and management lackeys can stop our growing awareness of our collective power, or our will to use it. Amazon bosses can assault workers with a constant barrage of anti-union propaganda, through A to Z messages, emails, text messages, “One Team” and “Vote NO” letters sent to our homes, signs on break room tables, ads on workplace TVs, notices in bathroom “inSTALLments,” workplace interviews with roaming consultants, and “captive audience” meetings, but they cannot overcome the obvious truth: there is no “One Team.”
The team that workers need is the Amazon Labor Union, the team made by the workers, of the workers, for the workers, to defend and empower workers through democracy, solidarity, and mutual aid, to rise up and demand a new contract, to oppose and finally end the long train of abuses and usurpations by Amazon autocrats and their well-paid management henchmen—who are decidedly not on our team. Without the ALU, Amazon workers have no team at all.
Jeff Bezos is not on our team: he thinks Amazon workers are “inherently lazy,” and has “intentionally limited upward mobility for hourly workers,” designing Amazon to aggressively fire workers at an annual rate of 150% because he “didn’t want hourly workers to stick around for long” and “did not want an entrenched work force, calling it ‘a march to mediocrity.’”
(Read: “The Amazon That Customers Don’t See,” The New York Times, June 15, 2021)
Felipe Santos is not on our team, the highly-paid Harvard MBA who exploits and abuses thousands of Staten Island workers in unsafe warehouse conditions, who repeatedly calls the police to arrest worker organizers, and who broadcasts endless lies to confuse workers about voting for the union that is in our obvious best interests. Felipe Santos is, like his doppelgänger on Amazon Music, a producer of “todo mentiras,” all lies. Amazon managers can’t help but lie, because the truth is that workers deserve better, management will never give it to us without a fight, and our labor union is the only way for us to win what we deserve.
I know we’ve got a long, long way to go, and where we’ll end up, I don’t know. We have two elections to win right now, two more election petitions in Staten Island to file, a long process of collective bargaining to negotiate and win a new contract with Amazon management, and a nationwide organizing and expansion campaign to plan and implement in the months ahead—among many other tasks. We know that Jeff Bezos, Andy Jassy, Dave Clark, and the whole Amazon army of executives and managers will never let up in their aggressive antagonism to our efforts, and we know there are still challenges and setbacks to come on our road to victory.
But we won’t let nothing hold us back. We’ve built too much collective power and too much momentum to be contained by the bosses’ petty schemes at this point. Regardless of any of the difficulties to come, regardless of all of the daunting work still to be done, we know that we’ve already won, and that the inevitable organization of Amazon labor unions across the entire United States is now only a matter time. It is no longer a question of whether the nationwide unionization of Amazon will happen but when. There ain’t no stopping us now.
ALU News
The New York Times: A Second Amazon Site on Staten Island Will Have a Union Election
VICE Motherboard: WATCH: NYPD Arrests Amazon Union Organizers at Staten Island Warehouse
Reuters: Amazon accused of violating U.S. labor law after union supporters' arrests
Bloomberg Law: Amazon Organizers Target a Potent Anti-Union Weapon
Amazon News
Reuters: Union says Amazon continues to interfere with election at Alabama warehouse
Teen Vogue: Union Busting: What Are Some of the Most Common Tactics Employers Use?
KUOW: Workers at Seattle Amazon Fresh store say they've formed a union
KUOW: Unions are getting lots of attention these days. A labor expert explains why
The Guardian: Man sues Amazon over van collision and blames ‘undue pressure’ on drivers
The Guardian: The data game: what Amazon knows about you and how to stop it
Reveal: Private Report Shows How Amazon Drastically Undercounts Its Carbon Footprint
Union News
VICE Motherboard: REI Workers in NYC Vote to Unionize in Landslide Election
Newsweek: Some Hershey's Employees Want to Unionize, Say Workplace Not So Sweet
The Hill: Outlawyered: How Starbucks is trying to stop its workers choosing unions
Associated Press: Paris transport strike disrupts subway, trains to suburbs
The Guardian: Tube staff and lecturers are showing how to stage a strike in the 21st century
Associated Press: 1 killed, 2 wounded as police clash with Haitian workers
Help Support Our Organizers In Need
If you believe in the justice of the ALU cause and the importance of mutual aid, perhaps you can contribute some funds to our worker organizers who have faced hardship and retaliation by Amazon management for their fearless organizing and still continue to struggle:
GoFundMe: Gerald was Illegally Fired by Amazon
GoFundMe: Help Jason Anthony to cover monthly expenses
GoFundMe: Daequan was illegally fired and is now homeless
Any contributions at all are greatly appreciated! Thank you for your support and solidarity!
Until Next Week!
If you have a story or news tip you want to contribute to our newsletter, or any other comments or questions, please email amazonlaborunion@gmail.com.
Follow and boost ALU on social media!
Twitter: @amazonlabor
Instagram: @amazonlaborunion
Tiktok: @amazonlaborunion
Facebook: facebook.com/amazonlaborunion
Facebook Group: facebook.com/groups/amazonlaborunion
YouTube: Amazon Labor Union
Website: amazonlaborunion.org
Create your profile
Only paid subscribers can comment on this post
Check your email
For your security, we need to re-authenticate you.
Click the link we sent to , or click here to sign in.