Front Burner - At one Amazon warehouse, a historic push to unionize

Episode Date: February 10, 2021

Jeff Bezos made Amazon into one of the world’s biggest retailers, but critics argue he did it at the expense of his workers. Now, one Alabama warehouse is voting on whether to unionize, a move that could spark major change, even here in Canada. Recode’s Jason Del Rey on how Amazon got here.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. So last week, Jeff Bezos stepped down as CEO of Amazon. It's not like he's leaving the company to golf full time.

He's staying on in a more limited role. But critics say the incredible wealth that Bezos and his company have built over the years has come at a cost. Warehouse workers who have been injured or killed on the job. Tens of thousands who have contracted COVID-19. And many who have spoken out about these conditions or tried to organize other workers have been fired. But now some people see some hope in one warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. Workers there are voting right now on forming a union. If they vote yes, it could be a historic first,

and it could have impacts throughout the company, including here in Canada and way beyond Amazon. Today, I'm speaking to Jason Del Rey. He's a senior correspondent at Recode who spent years reporting on Amazon. He's also hosted the first season of Recode's Land of the Giants podcast, which was all about Amazon. And he's currently writing a book about Amazon and Walmart. What I'm trying to say here is that he knows this company very well. Hi, Jason. Thanks so much for being here. My pleasure. So Jeff Bezos is stepping down as CEO of Amazon. And I wonder if you, as someone who has spent so much time

looking at this man and the company that he built from the ground up, could reflect on his significance. And I realize this is a big question to start off with, but if you could pick one thing, what's the biggest thing that you think that Bezos has changed for people? One thing. I think he has single handedly transformed consumer expectations for what convenience should look like in sort of a modern economy. I think we'll get into all the downsides of that sort of invention or shift. But that's sort of what is at the top of the list for me. And I want to get to those downsides with you in a few moments. But first, we know this has made Bezos a very rich man, the richest man in the world at the moment. He's going back and forth with Elon Musk. And even by

Jeff Bezos standards, he made a ton of money in 2020, right? And how much richer is Bezos this year than he was a year ago? I think the figure is currently around 70, that's seven zero billion with a B dollars. So $70 billion, which if you didn't know what kind of company he ran might strike you as crazy during a pandemic. But Amazon benefited immensely from the COVID-19 pandemic. Right. Because we're all at home, obviously, getting packages delivered to our doors. And I know that for a long time, a lot of critics have argued that Bezos has made this money at the expense of his workers and their safety. And those criticisms really did ramp up this year, that the wealth of Amazon has really been working at cross purposes with good employment standards, low wages, of course.

And also one of the biggest things the company has come under pressure for is worker injuries, and it's hundreds of massive warehouses around the world. And I know that you've reported on Amazon warehouse workers being injured on the job, and in some cases, workers who were killed. And are there any specific stories that have really stuck out to you? You know, the one that I that I still remember, was actually, I think, the first worker death that I reported on. Since covering the company, it was back only a few months into my new beat. company. It was back only a few months into my new beat. And it was in late 2013, I believe. And the reason it stuck out, yes, it was sort of a horrific incident where a man was crushed at a New Jersey facility. But it was because he was not a full-time Amazon employee. And the company sort of let that be known. They gave a statement expressing their sort of

sorrow over what happened, but also made it clear this was a temp worker and sort of, you know, without being explicit about it, hinting that it was some other company's problem. And so the company does employ itself more than a million people now. But that sort of stuck with me that this guy gave his life and sort of the impression I got from the company was sadly, like, not our problem. Just to hit a few examples, when you look at injury reports, what kind of injuries are we seeing coming out of these warehouses? I mean, there are sort of the catastrophic ones that you may see other places occasionally as well with heavy equipment, right? You have the occasional amputation philip lee terry had been doing maintenance on a forklift a security camera

captured the accident clearly you could see he's underneath this there's nothing protecting him the heavy forks and metal platforms suddenly fell crushing terry and killing him his body lay there nearly two hours before a co-worker found him. But a lot of, you know, talking to safety experts and logistics experts, a lot of the injuries you see now are injuries of repetition that come from doing the same thing over and over again. Candace Dixon worked as a stower. I had a full shift of all heavy items.

That's what happened. I got injured. I pulled my back out. Now, more than two years later, her workers' comp settlement has run out, and she says she's still in pain. I can't stand for too long. I can't sit for too long. I don't know what else to do. I guess it's just going to be a problem that I'm going to have forever. Those are sort of the types of injuries that I hear about most common. What do we know about how often Amazon's workers are getting injured? Like, are we talking about more than average here? So there's been some great reporting by a variety of outlets over the last few years

showing that Amazon's average in injury rates inside its warehouses are higher than industry average. The company's claim has been that Amazon has become more aggressive than other industry peers at recording safety incidents or injuries. company's face over the last year when a reporter named Will Evans at an outlet called Reveal reported that in Amazon's automated warehouses, so these are warehouses outfitted with sort of robots, that the incidents were even worse, while Amazon was saying that robotics made the job safer and better. In fact, the rate of serious injuries at the most common type of fulfillment center was more than 50% higher at robotic warehouses. Workers and former safety managers have told us robots increase the an industry setter when it came to safety measures. An additional statement saying it's misleading to judge their workplace safety based solely on the number of injuries. We strongly refute the claims that we've misled anyone.

Right, and this is an issue that we've seen in Canada too. The Toronto Star has found that the average injury rate in Amazon's Canadian warehouses was actually 15% higher than Reveal, the outlet that you just mentioned, had found in the U.S. They are higher, they're 15% higher than the American average. And actually in 2016, the company's facility in Delta, B.C.

had the highest injury rate across Canada and the United States. You know, a lot of reporting has suggested that part of the reason for these high numbers of injuries is these really relentless quotas and efficiency metrics that Amazon workers have to hit. And I guess the robots fit into this conversation as well. And can you tell me about those? Sure. So, you know, Amazon, you know, there are different roles in different warehouses, but basically there are people who pick products, people who stow products, people who pack boxes.

And yeah, in many of these roles, the quotas or rate, as Amazon calls it, is hundreds of items an hour. And so that is really relentless work. I mean, can you imagine doing that? Hundreds of items, packing them in an hour? I don't know. It's really hard work. And I would say Amazon does not hide the fact that the work is hard work. I think that's sort of what they say up front, even in some of their job listings. But there is a point at which the demands are not human. We sat down with a group in San Bernardino who'd recently worked at Amazon. Once you work there for a certain amount of time, it's just like, it's just not realistic.

There's absolutely no way to make rate. You know, you've got to find a little ways to cheat it. Because once you hit rate, by the end of the week, they raised it, they bump it up again. We're not treated as human beings. We're not even treated as robots. We're treated as part of the data stream. And, you know, what I found in even reporting about sort of what they have planned in the future for their robotics ambitions in these warehouses, Amazon has sort of created this place where employees are serving as a bridge between the world we live in now inside

warehouses and a fully automated world. And so their bosses in many cases, yes, there are humans, but their bosses are algorithms and computers. What a lot of this comes down to is, you know, Amazon sort of says it is better than its peers. It has all these safety measures. And the truth is you can't be customer obsessed as Amazon is, and also have your top priority be safety. You have to pick one over the other. Right. I mean, this is something that I really took away from your podcast, The Land of the Giants Season 1, that, you know, a lot of companies say that they're customer focused. Like this is the kind of language that they use, but that it is so ubiquitous at Amazon.

Hey, like it really is their whole ethos. That's absolutely right. And you can only have one top priority and they've chosen theirs. And so that has absolutely created these ripple effects, these side effects, which as the second largest employer in the U.S., at least, affect a lot of people. Jeff Wilkie created the Amazon Fulfillment Center system. Obviously, if the rates are too high, you're not going to have people showing up for work. They come to work every day. They stay for years. And people come to work because these are great jobs.

They're safe. We pay double the minimum wage, the national minimum wage. We have terrific benefits. The benefits for the folks that work on the floor are the same benefits that my family has access to. Our family leave is like 20 weeks. And I know this year, one of the biggest safety issues workers have faced is of course COVID-19, right? And what do we know about how widespread the virus

has been in Amazon warehouses? So as of the fall, Amazon announced, I believe, somewhere around 19,000 cases. But we really don't have, other than Amazon's own calculations, sort of a real clear picture of how bad it's been compared to either other workplaces or just communities at large. Right. We don't have that picture here in Canada either. Amazon will release the numbers saying they lack context. But there have been multiple reports here in Canada as well of outbreaks at warehouses. I want to talk to you a little bit now about organizing efforts from workers. I know over the past few years, we've seen Amazon workers try to organize and change some of these issues.

And we've seen these efforts intensify over the pandemic. People have led strikes. They've organized petitions. They've spoken to the media. As Amazon rolls out hundreds of deals and demand bogs down its website, warehouse workers walked off the job. Activists and unions also joining the protests, marching outside the New York apartment of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. And some have also tried to form unions. And I want to get to this warehouse in Alabama in a minute. But first, in general, how has Amazon responded when workers have tried to organize like this? Publicly, they'll say they respect the right to choose to

unionize or not. They have to. I mean, that's the law. Privately, you know, they try very hard. And to be fair, like many large retailers, you know, Walmart, one of the most infamous to convince workers, pressure workers that unions are not necessary and are not the right thing for the Amazon workforce. Like in this video, which was sent to Whole Foods managers in 2018. If you see warning signs of potential organizing, notify your building HRM and GM site leader immediately. The most obvious signs would include use of words associated with unions or union-led movements like living wage or steward. There's also been allegations of the attempted silencing or firing of people who speak up, who try to organize unions, right? That's right.

There were, I believe, somewhere around, you know, between warehouse and corporate employees, at least a half dozen firings last year that were related to people who had raised concerns publicly about the working conditions of warehouse employees. In every case, Amazon pointed to some other policy that the person had violated. Each of those people thought that was BS and often came closely after or immediately after they spoke out publicly. Amazon under fire this morning for terminating an employee who let a walkout at its Staten Island facility. Mayor Bill de Blasio has ordered the human rights commissioner to investigate Amazon.

And so, you know, that told me a lot. It told me Amazon was not concerned about the risk of how those firings looked. Sort of a scary thought for a big corporation. And it also told me that there was real risk at Amazon for employee activism. This issue came up in Canada last spring. I remember Tim Bray, this BC-based VP, he actually quit because he said that there were silencing of people who appeared to be troublemakers who raised concerns about COVID here in Amazon warehouses. Amazon has defended their move, saying that they fired those employees

for repeatedly violating internal policies. Bray said that those justifications were, quote, laughable. The engineering workers are high paid and in demand. And in the warehouse, the workers have no power power and so they get a very different kind of treat they're in what you might want to call a different class but that word is unfashionable In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections.

Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo, 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples.

Jason, I want to ask you why you think Amazon has clamped down so hard on workers organizing. I don't want to sound naive here, but Bezos has accumulated so much added wealth over the last nine months that according to Oxfam, he could give every Amazon employee $105,000 and still be as rich as he was before the pandemic. I mean, when he and the company are making this much money, what does he lose by giving workers a little bit more runway here? Or, you know, why not just be okay with shipping packages to us in 48 hours instead of 24 hours? Yeah, I think, this is my opinion, this is not fact, but my best guess is Amazon believes that if they allow unions in their facilities, and actually they've said this, that sort of their business models will become less flexible. It'll be less innovative, they won't be able to change on the fly as much. less flexible. It'll be less innovative. They won't be able to change on the fly as much.

We do not believe unions are in the best interest of our customers, our shareholders, or most importantly, our associates. Our business model is built upon speed, innovation, and customer obsession. Things that are generally not associated with unions. To me, that's translated as they think they'll be less efficient. And why does that matter to them? All about competition, right? I think they believe that if they allow this or if unions get a hold, they will have to slow down. And yes, we'll get it in four days, you know, maybe we'll get it in instead of next day,

you know, two and a half days. And I think they think that could be the beginning of the end for Amazon because others will take their place. How much are these guys making in the warehouses? Because I mean, there are a lot of people who argue that these wages are low. Sure. So, you know, in the US, the starting hourly pay is $15 an hour. And I spoke to someone yesterday who had been working an overnight shift and so for several months was paid 18 an hour with medical coverage from the start, which is not always the case. So there are retailers who do not start hourly pay inside warehouses at $15 an hour, at least in the U.S. But what raises look like after that, not always a lot.

Can you raise a family on that? In most places, no. So I think there's a fair argument sort of on both sides of this may be better than some competitors. I think there's a fair argument sort of on both sides of this may be better than some competitors. Is it good enough for a company like Amazon, you know, run is this warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, this sort of unlikely warehouse, which has this vote ongoing on unionizing right now, which is one of the main reasons that you and I are speaking today. And Amazon has tried to stop this vote from happening too.

For example, there was an attempt to delay the union vote, which got rejected by the National Labor Relations Board. The corporation has now launched a campaign called Do It Without Dues. Amazon put up a website that shows what workers could afford with the money that would otherwise go to monthly union dues. The company tried unsuccessfully to force an in-person vote despite concerns over the coronavirus. And this warehouse has really, it's gone further than any other Amazon employees have been able to get before in a state with particularly low rates of unionization, I should note. The union's national president says this could be the start of something bigger.

Just by going to an election, we're going to generate a lot more organizing at Amazon warehouses all over. How do you think they got to this point? I think there were two sort of factors that helped this cause. I think one is, frankly, the pandemic and sort of the sort of exposure and spotlight on working conditions across different industries, but especially for in a sort of an essential provider like Amazon. I think all the coverage, media and employees speaking out, I think that sort of got politicians attention. I think it got, you know, consumers attention.

And so I think that was a big thing. I think also sort of the racial reckoning that has swept across the U.S. and sort of the reawakening of the of U.S. society acknowledging, you know, systemic racism in this country, I think also played a role because Amazon warehouses, at least in the U.S., are majority run by non-white employees. And so I think there was sort of the racial reckoning. I think there was the workplace conditions spotlight because of the pandemic. And I think that all came together to sort of make this a time in which they could gain traction. And if these guys, if this warehouse unionizes,

do you think that we'll see a domino effect here throughout the company? So I think that's what Amazon fears for sure. You know, one caveat is that if the union vote goes in the union's favor and this facility unionizes, there still needs to be a contract that's negotiated, which I imagine will be a brutal process. And it won't mean that every facility will unionize. It just means this one will. All of that said, yes, I think it will absolutely both give unions confidence to really make hard pushes at Amazon facilities, whether this union or others. I think also it will give some employees who have thought no way we can ever unionize the hope that it's possible. And I wonder if I could just ask you this one final question, because I know that

you're writing a book right now about the rivalry between Amazon and Walmart. And what kind of effect do you think that this could have beyond Amazon? That's a great question. I think if this passes at an Amazon facility, a place that is known as one of the hardest places to unionize, I think for sure there's potential that employees of other retailers or just other companies that sort of employ a frontline type workforce, we'll see hope in this too. I know the unions are absolutely hoping that this leads to more union activity, period. And so, yes, could we see this lead to, you know, Walmart activism, like we've seen on and off over the years? For sure. But I would just say I think there's still a long way to go. All right.

Jason Del Rey, thank you so much for this conversation. Thanks for having me. All right. So before we say goodbye, an update on day one of Donald Trump's second impeachment trial. If you vote to proceed with this impeachment trial, future senators will recognize that you bought into a radical constitutional theory. Imagine the potential consequences for civil officers you know and who you believed served so honorably, but who in the view of a future Congress might one day be deemed to be impeachment worthy. Imagine it now because your imagination is the only limitation. That was David Schoen and a sample of the argument being made this week by Trump's legal team. His attack on the constitutionality of having an impeachment trial for a former president didn't seem to make a difference.

56 to 44 senators voted that the trial is constitutional, including six Republicans. That means one senator, Bill Cassidy from Louisiana, actually switched sides. Another notable moment of the day was a dramatic video presented by the Democratic House managers to begin their argument. The trial starts up again today at noon. Both sides are allotted 16 hours to make their cases. That's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for

listening to FrontBurner. We'll talk to you tomorrow.