The Fight to Organize Amazon Is a Fight for Racial Justice

By Nora De La Cour, Jacobin

06 February 21

Jeff Bezos joined Black Lives Matters' calls for racial justice last year. But Amazon workers in the majority-black town of Bessemer, Alabama are trying to unionize — and Amazon has fought them tooth and nail.

ast spring and summer, we heard impassioned calls for racial justice reverberate through the mainstream media. Self-styled anti-racism experts surged to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. CEOs declared they would “stand with” “the Black community” and pledged eye-popping sums for so-called racial justice programs.

Never one to miss the zeitgeist, Amazon CEO, and multi-multi-billionaire Jeff Bezos leapt on board, tweeting support for his black employees and donating $10 million to “combat[ting] systemic racism.” Amazon inserted a “Black Voices” tab into its streaming service and put money behind projects like the recently released One Night in Miami. Bezos publicly scolded racist Amazon customers, winning widespread praise.

But what story might Bezos’s warehouse workers tell, were they to be released from their nondisclosure agreements?

The Union Campaign in Bessemer

On February 8, ballots will be mailed out to some six thousand Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama who will begin voting on whether to join the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union (RWDSU). If enough vote in favor, the Bessemer Robotics Sortable Fulfillment Center will make history as the first unionized Amazon facility in the United States.

Despite its best efforts, Amazon has had to contend with a partially organized labor force in Europe, where unions have won some pro-worker concessions. But in the United States, Amazon has successfully thwarted unionization using a range of tactics, including hiring intelligence analysts to track “labor organizing threats,” spying on employees’ interactions in closed Facebook groups, and training managers to observe and report “early signs” of organizing such as increased camaraderie between workers and the use of terms like “living wage.”

The last time Amazon faced a union election at a US facility was in 2014, when tech workers in Middletown, Delaware voted against joining the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers following a barrage of pressure tactics from Amazon. The retail giant has mounted a similarly aggressive campaign to extinguish the current union challenge.

Bessemer warehouse workers told the American Prospect that they faced threats of job loss for their involvement with RWDSU, and Bloomberg reported this week that employees are being ordered to attend meetings where management pushes anti-union propaganda. The company has hired the same high-powered anti-union law firm, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, that helped it undercut the organizing effort in Delaware.

Last November, RWDSU petitioned the National Labor Relations Board to hold an election at the Bessemer facility, asking the federal body to include fifteen hundred workers in the bargaining unit. Amazon successfully negotiated to expand the unit to encompass seasonal employees, and those hired to perform safety training and medical care, making it one of the largest-scale efforts to organize private sector employees in recent US history.

Although the bigger unit makes the union’s task more challenging, RWDSU went along with the move, suggesting organizers believe they have enough momentum to run a successful community-wide campaign. There’s some reason for optimism: RWDSU has a long history in the South and currently represents some seventy-five hundred poultry workers in Alabama, meaning that local members have been able to help with the union’s BAmazon campaign.

Amazon has fought hard for the union vote to be held in person, which would make it impossible for sick workers to participate. In a January 15 decision, an NLRB official called Amazon’s claims that in-person voting would be safe “not persuasive.” Amazon has appealed that decision; the board’s response is expected shortly.

In addition to concerns about COVID safety, workers have expressed frustration about impossibly high productivity expectations. Once a picking or stowing job is assigned, workers are given a number of seconds to complete it. Computers record whether they finish in time, and Amazon uses that data to discipline or fire people.

While bathroom breaks are not explicitly prohibited, the expectation that workers prepare four hundred items for delivery in a single hour creates a situation where employees feel they are risking their jobs when they use the bathroom or tend to other human needs. It’s no wonder that reports have proliferated of Amazon workers peeing in bottles to avoid the cost of a break.

An Issue of Racial Justice

Bessemer, a southwestern suburb of Birmingham, is a poor, majority-black town. Over a quarter of its residents fall below the federal poverty line. The state’s minimum wage is just $7.25.

At the Amazon plant, the work speedups make it difficult to breathe, much less take stock of one’s situation. The pandemic has interfered with workers’ ability to connect socially. Their employer is a viciously anti-union company that operates more like an empire than a firm — “a modern-day East India Company,” as Natasha Lennard called it.

Progressive International calculated that Jeff Bezos could personally afford to pay a $105,000 bonus to all of Amazon’s 1.2 million employees and still be as rich as he was before the pandemic. Instead, he is building a massive clock in a hollowed-out mountainside.

Yet despite the odds, workers have been managed to get “sufficient showing” to qualify for an election. One of the likely reasons is that RWDSU has imbued its campaign with the spirit of racial justice.

Its organizing drive, which is headed by mostly black union members from poultry plants in the region, is based on reaching out to the Bessemer warehouse workers, many of whom are also black, with a clear message: you deserve to be treated fairly. “I am telling them they are part of a movement that is worldwide,” Michael Foster, an organizer and poultry worker, told the New York Times. “I want them to know that we are important and we do matter.” The BAmazon website urges workers to “with[stand] management’s tricks,” and move forward together to force the company to give workers a “seat at the table” and accord them the respect and dignity they deserve.

Amazon’s anti-union website, meanwhile, features a cartoon puppy dancing in front of a turntable and images of workers with various complexions grinning behind their masks. The site encourages workers to “stay friendly” by rejecting a “restrictive” dues-paying relationship with the union.

The private intimidation tactics have been less comical. One RWDSU organizer told the Times that an unidentified man at the Bessemer facility used a racist slur when attempting to make her leave her post outside the warehouse — a threat freighted with bloody precedents in a region where anti-unionism and white supremacist violence have long gone hand in hand.

Union organizers are working to build strength in the face of this intimidation the same way civil rights organizers sought to topple Jim Crow in the face of white terrorism. Their tool is solidarity. Speaking of workers who are fearful of management’s reaction to the campaign, Foster told the Times, “We want to show them we are not leaving them until this is done.”

Civil Rights Unionism at Amazon

Following the murder of George Floyd and the explosion of Black Lives Matter protests last summer, there was much talk about the need to dismantle systems of white supremacy. But corporate America’s squishy pledges to fight a hazily undefined “racism” are hollow and profit-driven. The anti-racism programs that come from employers often just consolidate bosses’ power over workers. Bestselling anti-racism authors purport to have answers, but their earning power depends upon the persistence of the problem.

So what does fighting racism actually look like? How do we take aim at the villains who offer false words of anti-racist solidarity while profiting from the dehumanization of a disproportionately black and brown workforce? How do we change the structures that oppress people?

Worker organizing at the Bessemer fulfillment center is one example of what true racial justice organizing can look like. People from different backgrounds are teaming up to contest Amazon’s exploitation of workers in a majority-black city. They are challenging a tech giant so muscular it makes their local politicians swoon. They are demanding conditions befitting their humanity. And in so doing, they are striving to take power back from a company that aids law enforcement in inflicting violence on communities of color, allows slavery in its supply chains, and perpetuates deadly environmental racism.

If Amazon actually thought black lives mattered, the company would have already voluntarily recognized the union. But workers in Bessemer just might get their union in spite of the company’s threats — and perhaps even spread their model of “civil rights unionism” to the rest of the country.

Tom Brady, the Super Bowl and the Aging Athlete's Mind-Body Problem

By Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Guardian UK

05 February 21

Like the Buccaneers quarterback, I played well into my 40s. But eventually you have to confront a future in which your physical skills are no longer enough

rofessional athletes are mayflies. The mayfly rises magnificently into the air on translucent wings, only to die within 24 hours. According to the NFL Players’ Association, the league average playing career lasts 3.3 years. That’s not long considering the many years of grueling daily training, various physical injuries, and social sacrifices athletes endure to play those three years. Compared to the NBA (4.5 to 6.5 years), the NHL (5 years), and MLB (5.6 years), the NFL has the shortest career lifespan. Worse, 78% of those NFL players go broke within three years of retirement.

Then there’s Tom Brady. Brady, considered by many to be the greatest quarterback of all time, is no mayfly. On Sunday, he will make his bid to win his seventh Super Bowl. At 43, he is the oldest active NFL player and, after playing 21 seasons, he is closing in on George Blanda’s 26-season record.

I was 42 when I retired from the Lakers. After 20 seasons, I had a lot of NBA records and very little hair. Some of those records have since been broken, some remain to be broken at a time to be decided. I did learn some lessons about being a middle-aged athlete in a league where the average age is 26, which is also the age of the average NFL player. Some of those lessons were about playing, some were about being a player – two very different things.

Playing on a professional level against well-trained athletes 20 years younger is a challenge. The court seems much longer, the legs seems heavier, the hoop seems smaller. That’s when you come face-to-face with what philosophers call the mind-body problem: the relationship between the consciousness of the mind and the stubborn bag of meat that is your body.

As a young athlete, the mind and body seem inexorably intertwined, best friends frolicking in mutual stimulation and reward. In other words, the mind tells the body what to do, the body obeys and both enjoy the results. But aging for an athlete is a betrayal. The body doesn’t respond with the same quickness, the same intensity, the same accuracy. Your best friend has become a complaining companion, kvetching about cold drafts, back pain and sore knees. When you’re young, your only opponent is the other team. When you’re older, you have two opponents: the other team and your reluctant body.

That’s when you make a truce with your body. In order to keep playing at a elite level, you promise to treat it better, eat healthier, stretch more, find the balance in your mind that soothes the body. I did that through yoga and martial arts. Both gave me more control over my body and helped me reduce the number of injuries I suffered. Both helped me be mindful of what I could and couldn’t do, yet let me push myself to perform at my peak levels. For Brady, it’s smoothies, massages, resistance bands, online brain exercises and a strict dietary regimen – with the occasional pizza.

The aging athlete hears a nagging thrum on continuous loop inside the brain: “Do I still have it? Do I even belong in this game? Don’t embarrass yourself.” In a very visceral way, it is like facing death. Not the cessation of bodily functions, but rather the cessation of one’s identity. How you see yourself. How others see you. Your value as a human being. There is a vast difference between being an active player earning fresh accolades and being a retired player resting on past accomplishments. As those accomplishments grow smaller in the rearview mirror, you feel more like a fraud still milking them so many years later.

This is why after I retired from the NBA, rather than spend my life as just a former athlete, I decided to redefine my identity through my achievements as a social activist and my new career as a writer. In choosing a new career, I needed the same challenge I had as an athlete, except this time the body would rest and the mind would take the lead. I knew that at first, my writing would be a curiosity. Some would dismiss it as capitalizing on my fame, like Steven Seagal’s album Songs from the Crystal Cave. I have written articles about politics and popular culture, books about African American history, novels, graphic novels, movies, and TV scripts. Fortunately, the novelty that I could string words together cohesively passed and my work as a writer – which I have been doing for longer than I played in the NBA – has been taken seriously.

I had already been an activist throughout my college and professional basketball careers, but now I had more time to give to fighting for social equity for all marginalized people. I did this through my writing, through my Skyhook Foundation and through showing up wherever I was needed to speak out. It is at this late stage of your career where you decide what kind of player you want to be, even after you retire. Aside from your excellence in your sport, what do you stand for, what values do you represent?

It’s still not certain what kind of player Tom Brady will be. In 2014, he sidestepped the subject of players taking stands on social issues: “I try to stay in my lane. All of those things, none of it’s really my business or my control. I’ve just been focusing on the games and what I can do better.” When asked about the possibility of being a spokesman on behalf of the players, he shook it off. “I certainly have a lot of personal feelings toward all those things, but it’s just, there’s nothing I can do … I really don’t want to be involved in any of those things … I just don’t want my name mentioned in any of those situations that are happening.”

However, in September of 2020, following the summer of national Black Lives Matter protests, he offered more direct support of the activists’ cause: “Everyone should deserve the opportunity to reach their fullest potential. Being in the locker room for 20 years and being around guys with every different race, religion, skin color, background and different states. Everyone [brings] something different to the table and you embrace those things. They expand you in ways that you couldn’t have been expanded if you weren’t exposed all those different things.” That suggests to me that he’s becoming a player who wants to use his voice to help achieve equity among Americans.

The great Spanish soccer player Xavi once said: “In football, the result is an impostor … There’s something greater than the result, more lasting – a legacy. ” Brady will be considered a great football player no matter what his politics. But when an athlete gets to be his age and is nearing the end of his career, maybe his legacy should be more than just being a great player but also being a great man.

It’s too early to tell whether Brady’s legacy will be just a bunch of impressive stats or something more lasting. Maybe the true measure of one’s legacy is how many people you inspire who have never seen you play.