Tangle - Amazon workers unionize.

Episode Date: April 12, 2022

Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York, voted to unionize earlier this month, the first time a successful organizing effort has taken place at one of the largest companies in America. Plus, a question about why people hate taxes.You can read today's podcast here.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here.Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and produced by Trevor Eichhorn. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle.

Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle Podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, without all that hysterical nonsense you find everywhere else. I am your host, Isaac Saul, and on today's episode, we are going to be talking about the Amazon unionization. I actually did a little poll on Twitter to see if readers had a preference about what we covered today and Amazon won out, so I ran with it, even though I know Twitter is a little bit of a biased space. But I think this is a super important story. So I'm excited to dive in. Before we jump in, though, we'll start off with our quick hits for the day. First up, and this is a story pretty close to home here. Five people were shot and a few unexploded devices

were found at a Brooklyn, New York City train station this morning in Sunset Park. I am recording this in Brooklyn, New York. You know, we're kind of all over the place, but I'm here today in the office and yeah, just scary sending love and thoughts to friends and family and everybody in the area and the city. I know we have a lot of listeners from the New York region, so I hope you're all safe and sound. Number two, U.S. inflation rose another 1.2% from February to March. It was the biggest month-to-month jump since 2005. The consumer price index was driven up mainly by supply chain issues, robust consumer demand, and more disruptions to global food and energy markets. So a lot of the same stuff we've been seeing, but now the war in Ukraine probably

making things quite a bit worse. Number three, President Joe Biden said he is suspending a federal rule preventing the sale of higher ethanol blend gasoline this summer in an effort to lower the price of fuel. Number four, Philadelphia announced it will restore an indoor mask mandate as COVID-19 cases rise across Pennsylvania. It is the first major city to reinstate mask mandates since many cities abandoned them a few months ago. Number five, the mayor of Mariupol, a city in Ukraine, said more than 10,000 civilians died in Russia's week-long siege so far. All right, before we jump into our main topic today, a quick podcast promotion. In case you

missed it, we interviewed Justin Higgins, a former legislative assistant and Republican National Committee opposition researcher who in 2016 switched his political party affiliation. The podcast dropped on Sunday. I asked him some questions like, do members of Congress really not read bills before they pass them? Do members of Congress actually spend their whole day fundraising? Who are the honest brokers? How does political lobbying work? How do political parties put together opposition research? What is it like to switch political parties? Those were some of the things we touched on. I think it was a really great episode. Justin is the founder and runs Politics Plus Media 101 podcast. You can listen to our conversation if you just scroll

down a little bit and wherever you're listening to this, you'll find the podcast. It'll say Interview Justin Higgins. All right. So today's main topic is the Amazon unionization vote. Amazon workers in Staten Island, New York, voted to unionize earlier this month. It is the first time a successful organizing effort has taken place at one of the largest companies in America. 2,654 workers voted in favor of unionization and 2,131 workers voted against it. The vote marked one of the most significant labor victories in modern U.S. history and ended Amazon's unbeaten streak of union busting. We're disappointed with the outcome of the election in Staten Island because we believe having a direct relationship with the company is best for our employees, Amazon said in a statement.

Amazon had pushed hard to stop the union, including calling for mandatory meetings where management attempted to dissuade workers from voting in favor of the union. The company also launched an anti-union website and posted anti-union posters in English and Spanish throughout the warehouse. Now, the union, dubbed Amazon Labor Union or ALU, will get to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement, a contract for workers, with Amazon directly. ALU says its top priorities are an hourly wage increase to a $30 minimum, the average warehouse starting pay right now is about $18, and longer breaks for workers. A previous high-profile union effort failed twice in Alabama, but now the ALU says it is looking to help a neighboring Staten Island warehouse

in its unionization vote later this month. The White House responded to the news. The president was glad to see workers ensure their voices are heard with respect to important workplace decisions, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said during a briefing. He believes firmly that every worker in every state must have a free and fair choice to join a union and the right to bargain collectively with their employer. Some people expressed skepticism the labor union would wield such strong results. the labor union would wield such strong results. Mark Cohen, who is the director of retail sales at Columbia University, told the Associated Press he didn't see how workers benefit from a unionized facility. He described Amazon as a highly disciplined and regimented business that's already paying premium wages while demanding a lot of output from workers. Amazon is not going to change their culture because there is now a union in their midst, Cohen said. They might be The unionization comes at a time when unions across the United States are enjoying some renewed momentum after years of declining influence.

Union pushes have already taken place at other major corporations like Starbucks, where more than 100 stores have filed for unionization, and other big companies like REI. It also comes at a time when support for unions is beginning to garner some bipartisan consensus, though for different reasons. We'll get into that in a minute. Amazon may not be done fighting either. It has filed a challenge of the vote with the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB, which oversees union elections like the one in Staten Island. Amazon is arguing, among other things, that the board's attempts to reinstate a warehouse employee who was fired for suspected union-related activity destroyed the, quote, laboratory conditions of the election that are supposed to be present for a vote. It also accused the union

organizers of disrupting anti-union meetings Amazon attempted to host. It's possible the challenge could make it all the way to the Supreme Court, though that would take years. In a moment, we're going to hear some reactions from the left and the right, and then my take. First up, we'll start with what the left is saying. The left supports the unionization. Many speculate that this is the birth of a title shift of workers taking back power across the country. Some criticize Amazon for how it treats workers and how it continues to try to shut this effort down. In the New York Times, Jim L. Bowie said these workers were able to deal a blow to one of the most powerful anti-union companies thanks to the strong economy. Even with rising inflation,

this is the strongest economy we've had for workers in at least a generation, Bowie wrote. Overall, in 2021, the United States added more than 6.4 million jobs to its economy, a record high. At the start of this year, the nation's labor market was on track to recover from the pandemic three times as fast as it did from the Great Recession a decade earlier. And it still is. The United States added 431,000 jobs in March and 95,000 more than previously recognized for the months of January and February, both of which also saw record job growth. Unemployment has dropped below 4%, the lowest since the economic boom of the

1990s, and wages are growing this year at an annual rate of more than 5%. Employers can go ahead and threaten to fire workers who try to unionize even if these threats are illegal, but the tight market for labor gives those workers other options, which makes the threat less potent than it might have been when the economy was weaker and jobs were scarce, he added. On the flip side, a red-hot labor market means that employers who want to fire employees are hamstrung by the fact that they may not be able to replace them with new workers. This, on its own, gives workers leverage where they may have possessed very little. In theory, Amazon could simply close a warehouse that voted to unionize, but the value of Amazon's shipping business rests

on its ability to deliver packages as quickly as possible, which means that the products must be as physically close to customers as is feasible. The very thing that makes Amazon what it is, its ubiquitous presence across the American landscape, also makes it vulnerable to those workers who are able to organize themselves. On April 1st, in the American Prospect, Harold Meyerson said, as of today, the balance of power in America's class struggle seems to have shifted just a bit. Class struggle? What class struggle? More like an unending one-sided blitzkrieg. Big business and small corporations and private equity firms, shareholders, and employers have all been clobbering workers for decades, Meyerson said.

The fierce and unified opposition of America's bosses to allowing their workers even a smidgen of power has been the foundation of American economic life for the past 40 years. But today, the day Amazon union workers unionized, just maybe that changed. America's wealthiest, most powerful, most seemingly indispensable company has lost to a pop-up coalition of workers who wage their campaign without affiliation or assistance from a single established union. A generation, it's clear, is stirring. On April 7th, Myerson added that Amazon's pledge to compensate workers fairly and give them dignity and respect is a tad bit disingenuous, writing that the annual rate of job turnover for huge warehouse workforces is a mind

boggling 150%. Given the careful study and precision with which Amazon crafts its business practices, this turnover rate is not a bug, but a deliberate considered feature. By making the work in its warehouse so debilitating to its employees' bodies, so demoralizing to their minds, and so exquisitely monitored by digital technology to track their employees' every move, Amazon plainly intends to have its workers sprint through their rounds until they drop, and then hire the next crew of sprinters. In the Washington Post, Helene Olin said the unionization contains some warnings for Democrats. Three Democratic senators, Arizona's Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly, along with West Virginia's Joe Manchin, the perennial killjoy of the left's wish list, voted against the Biden administration's

nominee to head the Labor Department's wage and hour division, Olin said. David Weill headed the same department during the Obama administration, and his defensive workers made business interests unhappy. So, what did Wheel do to engender this internal party opposition? During the Obama administration, he spearheaded an aggressive upgrade of U.S. overtime laws, which would have boosted the wages of an estimated 4 million salaried workers. The effort was first stayed by courts and then dialed back by the Trump administration. He looked unfavorably on the franchise model in which major corporations slough off responsibility for employees to a smaller franchisee. We'll deem both responsible for the welfare of those workers,

a designation the Trump administration later reversed. In other words, he was an effective advocate for workers, and he attempted to hold multinational corporations responsible for their employees' low wages, Olin said. Little wonder business interests such as the Chamber of Commerce came out in force against his nomination. Biden is attempting to tackle the imbalance, but he can't achieve more for workers on his own. He needs the support of his party to make regulatory and legislative changes. Some Democratic legislators are missing that bigger picture, which is how we came to see

Whale voted down the first nomination vote defeat of Biden's administration. All right, that is it for what the left is saying. That brings us to the right's take. The right is divided about the unionization, with some opposed to Amazon's business practices and others saying it isn't necessary. Some say Republicans need a much stronger pro-worker message. Others say the unionization efforts happen without Democrats' help. In the New York Post, Nicole Gelinas said Amazon's first-ever union won't be thanking Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The New York Post's Nicole Gelinas said Amazon's first-ever union won't be thanking Alexandria

Ocasio-Cortez. She was supposed to attend a rally last summer for the workers, but jilted them without warning, a snub union leader Christian Smalls called a slap in the face. She has cited both scheduling conflicts and security concerns as excuses, Gelinas wrote. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season?

Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages 6 months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. Fact is, though, the Democratic Socialist of America movement has never been a union movement. Nearly four years ago, when AOC herself won her Democratic primary, she beat the union-backed incumbent Joe Crowley. This all creates a huge tension between Amazon and Starbucks workers creating unions and AOC types who claim

to stick up for workers' rights. AOC wants people to look to the government for all their benefits, whereas smalls and fellow organizers want to extract even better benefits from their employers. Unionized workers with excellent health care have never been advocates of Medicare for All because they don't need it, Jelena said. AOC and fellow Democratic socialists claim to support unions, but much of their labor agenda consists of universal benefits that would make labor unions obsolete. The most obvious one from the DSA's platform, to quote, guarantee a job with union wages and benefits to everyone who wants one by creating millions of public sector jobs, end quote.

With union wages benefits, there's no need for a union. Ironically, and something AOC is well smart enough to understand, a newly powerful service sector workforce actually harms support for the DSA movement. People with good jobs are not street protesters or socialist voters. Diana Foucault-Roth said Amazon employees don't need a union. Workers don't need unions because the economy is booming and workers face a seller's market for their skills. They also don't want to pay substantial union dues, and they understand

that the union agenda would drive jobs offshore, she said. Over the past year, the American economy has created more than 7 million jobs. Production earnings rose by 7%, and the labor force participation rate increased by almost a full percentage point. In February of this year, the economy created 678,000 jobs. The forecast for March, due out April 1st, is similar. The unemployment rate stands at 3.8 percent. The labor market is getting tighter. Amazon workers have more bargaining power without a union than they did a year ago, she added. Moreover, with almost 11 million unfilled jobs, employees have their pick of other positions if they want to move. People at all income levels, including adults without a high school diploma, are getting jobs, and they don't need unions to advance.

In The Federalist, Emily Jashinsky said workers caught between big business and big labor need Republicans. Corruption in big business, however, doesn't negate corruption in big labor or invalidate all of the right's long-held arguments against unions, Jashinsky said. Conservatives seeking to support the plight of workers against certain callous corporations needn't embrace another corrupt institution in the process. Tempting as it is to throw out the old playbook and stick it to today's corporatists in every way possible, the reality that unions are not always good for workers remains true. It's also true, however, that unions have their place in the private sector, even after years of worker-friendly regulations and changes in the economic climate. Still, she says, the right has long been correct to criticize unions as corrupt and partisan arms of the Democratic Party. Among the many factors contributing to the decline in union density, worker choice clearly played a major role.

Workers deserve the right to withhold their wages from mismanaged organizations just as they should have the right to bargain against their mismanaged employers, who do the very same. There are, of course, companies that treat their employees well, with or without unions. Some of this is certainly due to the looming threat of unionization, but depending on the labor market and economy, even the greediest capitalist has financial incentives to treat workers well. All right, that's it for the left and the right stake, which brings us to my take.

So it kind of feels hard to overstate how remarkable this is. Not just the fact that this bottom-up labor organization finally worked at Amazon, but the reaction to it across the political spectrum as well. While their reasons may differ, the unionization effort has found genuine support on the left and the right, something that is obviously rare in today's political landscape. The Democrats' traditional arguments are all the same here, however hollow given their love for corporate cash. Big business, takes advantage of workers, doesn't pay them fair wages, doesn't treat them well, and allows the wealthiest to hoard at the top. The right's arguments feel more novel, though.

A disgust with consolidated corporate power, a recognition that their support among working-class Americans is blossoming, and a sense that the same people driving progressive cultural ideology and offshoring jobs to China may not be their allies. There was plenty said above about the remarkable nature of this vote, so I won't waste space repeating it here. It is indeed remarkable. What I find more important, though, is the larger context. We are currently witnessing the rise of worker power, not just in unions, but nearly every corner of American life, and especially in more urban and suburban areas where there are an abundance of jobs. People are quitting in droves to find better work, getting higher wages, better benefits, and yes, even unionizing. And employers

are just caving in a lot of places and are being left with little other choice. The tight labor market and post-pandemic boom in spending have handed increased leverage to workers across the board. It may also portend a rising class conflict. The new breed of working class Americans now demanding better pay and better jobs recognizes that Democrats' core funders are the likes of Amazon and Starbucks. They also recognize that the GOP is traditionally the union-busting free market party that has allowed so much wealth to be concentrated at the top for so long. It's politically significant that this group may not see allies in either political camp and is instead ripe for the picking. Americans are skeptical about their future and their kids' future at a time when they view CEOs, corporations,

and the wealthy very negatively. This kind of worker-led revolt, whether it's in the form of unionization, mass resignations, political shifts, walkouts, strikes, or demand for higher wages, cannot be ignored, and it has the potential to reshape the entire country. Remember, if you have thoughts about my take, you can write in, Isaac at ReadTangle.com, and maybe I'll publish it in the podcast. retangle.com and maybe I'll publish it in the podcast. All right, next up, your questions answered. This one comes from Chris in Oakland, California. Why are taxes so despised? When I think of taxes, I think of all the great things that can be done with that money to make our lives better. I understand that governments can be quite inefficient sometimes, but that seems like mostly an organizational policy issue and the services are generally things we all want.

Can you think of any way to get people excited about where their taxes are going instead of so upset about it? Okay, so I think there are a number of reasons people hate taxes. As a newly minted business owner, I can certainly understand it. One of the dynamics that happens when you're an employer, which I am and which I only learned from becoming one, is that you really see how much money the government takes. Rather than getting a paycheck that is my paycheck and maybe being owed taxes later, I now see all my revenue come in first and then I pay my staff and then around this time every year, do a bunch of math and find out I owe the government tens of thousands of dollars. When it happens like that, it really changes your perspective a bit.

Another simpler reason is the one you sort of touched on. You want your taxes going to things you support. I recently reflected on whether we are right to spend so much tax revenue on the military, but plenty of Americans despise those numbers. tax revenue on the military, but plenty of Americans despise those numbers. If I knew all my taxes were going to my retirement, a safety net for the poor, well-behaved police, honest politicians, building schools, supporting veterans, and efficiently ensuring our food and water was safe to consume, I wouldn't have many gripes. But when you realize your tax dollars are often wasted or going to the salaries of inept and corrupt politicians and bureaucrats, it becomes a little bit less appealing. I think the best way to get people excited about taxes would be to significantly reduce government waste and to improve the quality of government-funded

entities like government health insurance, schools, public transportation, and regulatory agencies in a way that allows people to really see the benefits. I also think local, state, and federal governments could all do a much better job of promoting the use of tax dollars and educating Americans about who their tax dollars actually employ, like teachers, police, firefighters, etc. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that many Americans don't even realize that. Alright, next up, our story that matters for the day. This one caught my eye. Fewer than one in 10 Americans now describe COVID-19 as a crisis, with one in six saying it is no problem at all, according to a new Axios report. Republicans, with 31%,

were 10 times as likely as Democrats, at 3%, to say COVID-19 isn't a problem. An overwhelming majority of Republicans and Democrats said COVID-19 is a problem but manageable, while just 16% of Democrats and 3% of Republicans called it a serious crisis. The poll shows that a growing number of Americans have moved into a new phase of the pandemic, one where public health officials will face significant challenges if and when they want to re-implement measures like masking in public places, as we're now seeing in Philadelphia. Axios has a breakdown of these polls and what they might mean. There's a link to it in today's newsletter. Next up, our numbers section. The number of people employed by Amazon in the United States is 1.1 million. The average starting wage at Amazon after a wage hike in 2021 is $18 an hour. The number of

serious injuries per 100 employees at Amazon warehouses in 2019 was 7.8 per 100 employees. The number of serious injuries per 100 employees at non-Amazon warehouses in 2019 was just 3.1 per 100 employees. In 2020, Amazon spent $1 billion on safety measures that included expanding a program for stretching, meditation, and nutritional guidance. In 2020, the number of serious injuries per 100 employees at Amazon warehouses came down from 7.8 in 2019 to 5.9 in 2020 per 100 employees. The percentage of online retail in the United States that is accounted for by Amazon is now 40%. Alright, and last but not least, our have a nice day story for today. I felt like, man, the quick hits were dark today, so we needed this one.

An area in Mexico once famous for cropping narcotics and cannabis is now turning to forestry. The Golden Triangle of Opium is starting to be referred to as the Golden Triangle of Sustainable Forestry, and the shift, which is happening in Durango, Mexico, which took decades, is now emerging as a major success story. Carlos Zapata Perez, a community forest manager engineer, told a newspaper that when we initially began providing them with technical assistance, we saw the situation, the strong presence of crops destined for drug production, and made a real effort to convince them to move away from growing narcotics. We told them their forest was an important resource because it could offer them many benefits, ecosystemic services, for example.

Now Durango is one of Mexico's top timber producers with a sustainable forestry program contributing 70 million cubic feet to the national industry. That's according to the Good News Network. There is a link to that story in today's newsletter. to the Good News Network. There is a link to that story in today's newsletter. All right, everybody, that is it for today's podcast. Quick heads up. Keep your eyes out, ears out, open for tomorrow's podcast.

It's a little bit different, a little bit special with some news about the rest of the week and the next couple of days and a little anniversary reflection on Tangle. So make sure you check in and give it a listen and we'll see you then. Have a good one. Peace. Our newsletter is written by Isaac Saul, edited by Bailey Saul,

Sean Brady, Ari Weitzman, and produced in conjunction with Tangle's social media manager, Magdalena Bokova, who also helped create our logo. The podcast is edited by Trevor Eichhorn and music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. For more from Tangle, subscribe to our newsletter or check out our content archives at www.readtangle.com. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada,

which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot. Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur, and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca.