‘The Time Is Now to Stand Up to Our Oligarchy,’ Sanders Tells Amazon Workers on Eve of Union Vote

On a day billed as “Solidarity Sunday,” Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez visited Amazon workers in New York City less than 24 hours before they start casting ballots on whether to form a union.

Voting at Amazon’s 1,500-employee LDJ5 facility—located across the street from the JFK8 warehouse that made history just three weeks ago by becoming the first of the e-commerce giant’s U.S. workplaces to unionize—is set to begin on April 25.

“If [Jeff] Bezos can afford a $500 million yacht,” Sanders (I-Vt.) said, referring to the company’s billionaire founder in a video promoting Sunday’s event, “he can afford to pay his workers at Amazon decent wages, decent benefits, and provide good working conditions.”

Following Bernie, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) congratulated the organizing committee of the Amazon Labor Union (ALU) on its groundbreaking victory earlier this month. She stated that it “reminded the world that you don’t need millions of dollars to stand up to multibillion-dollar corporations, you just gotta do the work. You just need solidarity, you need to show people that you give a damn about them, and they will come together and organize and demand better for their lives.”

Derrick Palmer, ALU’s vice president of organizing, said: “I’m glad that everyone is finally waking up and realizing the power that we have as an organization, as people… I think that’s been lost throughout these years, and I’m glad that it’s finally back.”

Amazon—which is notorious for mistreating its workers and spent $4.3 million on anti-union consultants in 2021 alone—has intensified its union-busting tactics in the lead-up to the election that starts Monday.

ALU president Christian Smalls—terminated by Amazon in March 2020 after he organized a walkout at JFK8 to protest management’s refusal to adequately protect workers during the early weeks of the Covid-19 pandemic—admitted that he has a vendetta against the company that fired him.

“From that moment forward we never looked back,” said Smalls. “We said… we’re gonna go anywhere it’s necessary to advocate for worker’s rights,” and after Amazon defeated the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union last year in an Alabama election the NLRB invalidated due to corporate interference, he and his comrades decided to “bring it back home to New York.”

A recent poll found that 75% of U.S. adults support unionization efforts at Amazon. The workers organizing is also underway at other powerful companies that have enjoyed record-breaking profits while workers get hammered by the pandemic and price gouging, including Starbucks and Apple.

When asked if the Biden administration needs to do more to support organized labor, Sanders said, “Yes.”

President Joe Biden has “talked more about unions than any other president in my lifetime,” said Sanders. “But talk is not enough. What he’s gotta do is start inviting these guys to the White House, he’s gotta invite the Starbucks workers to the White House, the other unions that are organizing all over this country, and make it clear that he is on their side and that he is going to do what he can.”

On reaching Virginia, Sanders also spoke with members of Starbucks Workers United, the union that has successfully organized hundreds of baristas nationwide in a matter of months, including those at five of the chain’s stores in Richmond.

“Like their Amazon brothers and sisters,” Sanders said in a promotional video, Starbucks workers “are also demanding decent wages, working conditions, and benefits. They are also taking on a billionaire who owns that company.”

Howard Schulz, an experienced union-buster who returned as Starbucks CEO this month amid an organizing wave in dozens of states—recently declared that the hugely profitable coffee chain is “being assaulted in many ways by the threat of unionization.”

Since the initial triumph of Starbucks workers in Buffalo, New York in December, employees at more than 200 of the corporation’s stores across the U.S. have filed petitions to unionize. Organizers have won more than 20 union elections so far, including at a flagship location in the company’s hometown of Seattle.

Starbucks workers have defied what leaked video footage reveals is a concerted union-busting campaign. NLRB prosecutors on Friday formally accused Starbucks of illegally firing baristas seeking to unionize their workplace in Memphis, Tennessee, and Phoenix, Arizona.

“People are saying, enough is enough,” Sanders stated. “We’re gonna organize, we’re gonna form unions, we’re gonna collectively bargain. And I think that is enormously important for our economy and for our entire country.”

Originally published at Commondreams.org, written by Kenny Stancil.