Challenge for Amazon: Republican senator backed attempt to form internal union

Marco Rubio, an ultra-conservative senator from Florida, who in the 2016 Republican Party primaries competed with Donald trump, to later become one of his main allies in Congress, publicly supported the formation of a union at an Amazon factory in Alabama, in what is seen as a major challenge to the policy of the company founded by Jeff Bezos in 1997: Avoid Organizing Your Staff.

Rubio, who voted against increasing the minimum hourly wage, set at $ 7.25 an hour since 2009, instead supported the attempt to form a union at this Amazon warehouse and distribution center, which employs 6,000 people.

In an article published in USA Today, one of the largest newspapers in the United States, Rubio accused Amazon of waging “a war on working class values” and supported the attempt to organize workers, but urging them to “not be allies of the left”.

“It is not the fault of Amazon workers that they believe the only option available to protect against bad faith is to form a union,” he wrote.

Workers at the Alabama plant began voting several weeks ago (they can vote by mail, a move Amazon has sought to resist) and will be able to do so until Monday, March 29, when the votes will be counted. If 50% plus one of the employees vote in favor, the union will be formed and become a member of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union (RWDSU).

If the union is formed, it will be part of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Workers Union.

The President of RWDWU, Stuart Appelbaum he celebrated the words of the Republican senator. Rubio’s support shows that the best way to defend the dignity of workers in the workplace is through unionization; it shouldn’t be a partisan issue, ”he said.

Double challenge

For Amazon it is a double challenge, also the President of the United States, Democrat Joseph Biden, in a way defended the union attempt when he criticized the Amazon campaign to discourage it. “It is not my job to decide whether a worker should join a union, but neither is it the job of the employer,” said the president.

Amazon also opposed, unsuccessfully, employees being able to vote by mail. And he also launched a campaign and created a web page warning employees that in the event of unionization “it will not be easy to be so collaborative and social between them”.

So far, Amazon has been successful in avoiding unionization in the United States, but not in Europe, where some unionized staff stoppages have affected its capacity and delivery times.

On the flip side, Amazon pays a minimum hourly wage of $ 15, more than double the legal minimum, and Bezos himself has been personally involved in a campaign to raise the minimum wage to $ 15 an hour. The company pays that amount, but not some of its main competitors, like WalMart, which just cut the minimum hourly wage for its employees to $ 11 last February. The company also insists on the extent of the health coverage it offers to its employees.

Essentially, unionization would reduce Amazon’s ability to quickly adjust its payroll, both rising and falling, in response to demand.

Other attempts

Prior to the Alabama affair, Amazon successfully challenged and defused an attempt to form a truckers union at its Des Moines, Iowa, plant that was not even passed. Earlier in 2014, an attempt to organize at a Delaware factory failed when only 30 workers voted to unionize.

This time, however, the attempt seems to have more force. It would be paradoxical if the first union in an Amazon factory in the United States were formed in Alabama, a conservative, Republican-dominated state with little union tradition and where, by law, employees are not obliged to pay union dues to them.

Culture war

The case presents aspects of the “culture war” which has intensified in recent years. In the Trump administration, Infobae Marc Blyth, director of the Center for International Economics and Finance at Brown University (United States) noted that the real wages of 40% of Americans with the lowest incomes have increased for three consecutive years. .

According to Blyth, Trump and the Republicans represent the “carbon coalition”, which prevails in states that depend heavily on industries associated with hydrocarbons, while Democrats prevail in urban centers, identified with the “post-carbon economy” , who prefers to consume energy from renewable sources. In this configuration, Amazon appears to be part of the urban and post-carbon economy, a different profile from that of a state like Alabama.

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