Tech Won't Save Us - How to Unionize Amazon w/ Justine Medina & Karen Ponce

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

Paris Marx is joined by Justine Medina and Karen Ponce to discuss how the Amazon Labor Union succeeded in unionizing Amazon’s JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, what it’s like working for Amazon, and where the movement to unionize Amazon goes next.Justine Medina is a packer at the JFK8 warehouse and is on the organizing committee of the Amazon Labor Union. Karen Ponce is a stower at JFK8 and the interim secretary of Amazon Labor Union. Follow Justine on Twitter at @jnmedina8989 and Karen at @Karennn_928.🎉 This month is the show’s second birthday. To celebrate, we want to get 100 new supporters at $5/month or above to bring on a producer to help make the show.  Help us hit our goal by joining on Patreon. You can also follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter.Find out more about Harbinger Media Network at harbingermedianetwork.com.Also mentioned in this episode:You can support the Amazon Labor Union by donating to its Solidarity Fund.Justine spoke to Labor Notes and wrote about why the ALU won.The ALU is making 8 immediate demands of Amazon.Chair of the ALU’s Worker Committee Angelika Maldonado spoke to Jacobin about the union win.Lauren Kaori Gurley wrote about the Amazon Labor Union’s successful union vote at JFK8.In early 2020, Amazon fired Chris Smalls and tried to smear him as “not smart or articulate,” but their internal memos leaked.Jacobin and Briarpatch published articles on the need to salt at Amazon.Chris Smalls says workers from 50 facilities have contacted the ALU.The ALU is demanding to meet with Amazon in early May to begin bargaining.Amazon is planning to ban a ton of words in its chat app.Amazon forcing people to work in warehouses without air conditioning was a scandal in 2011.Support the show

I feel like we proved to everyone, politicians, Jeff Bezos, that, you know, all these workers with little resources, no support, they did it. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us. I'm your host, Paris Marks. And before we get to this week's guest, just a few things to get to first. First of all, I can see that everyone really liked last week's episode with Molly White. I can see it in the download numbers and also the responses from listeners. But you know who else liked it? Ed and Jathan from This Machine Kills and the hosts of Trash Future, who I assume after hearing our for their new shitcoin, Nugcoin, but we most certainly will not be doing that because Tech Won't Save Us is the best tech-critical podcast on the go right now. And with that said, a big thank you to the new supporters of the show who

have joined since last week to help us reach our goal of getting 100 new supporters at $5 a month or above or existing supporters who upgrade their pledges so I can bring on a producer to lift some of the weight off of my shoulders so I can focus more on the research and the interviews for this podcast. As of Wednesday evening, we're already at 72 supporters

toward that 100 supporter goal. So fantastic, and I thank you so much for showing your support of the show and the work that I do for it so the show can take this next step forward and get even better. So I can do the work that is necessary to bring you these fantastic interviews. If you have not become a supporter yet, or you're considering upgrading your pledge, that would really help me hit that goal.

And in exchange, if you support at $5 a month, that's the Caesar Cut Replicant tier, you get access to our Discord server, you get access to new Q&As that I'll be starting in May or June, and you will also get some stickers in the mail. And if you join at $10 a month, you'll also get a metal pin, which will be available first and exclusively for supporters who are supporting at $10 a month. That's the Space Cultist tier this month. And you can do that by going to patreon.com slash tech won't save us. Now there are a ton of new supporters that I can thank. And I also want to note that I also need to still thank some people from last month because I did some terrible mismanagement. I was trying to only say three names per show and then a whole big long list kind of got piled up. So let's run through these names. Thank you to Catherine Scott,

Liam from Auckland, JC from Australia, Sarah Payne Wagner, Adam Olivieri from Los Angeles, Ben Davis from Brooklyn, Terry Minnick from College Station, Greg from Saratoga Springs in New York, Josh from LA, Timotei from Montreal, Nick from Austin, Stephen from San Antonio, Sarah from Brazil, Chris Duke from Perth, Australia, Chris from Finland, Stian from Sweden, David from Toronto, Greg from Boston, Tom from Sheffield, and he is with the United Tech and Allied Workers in the UK, Omer from Edmonton, Dan from Seattle, Ingmar from Doha, Pat from Sydney, Lynette from Kingston, Ontario, Casey from New Jersey, David from London, Tanner from Pittsburgh, and Josh from Chicago. Thanks to all of you for supporting the show. And if you

want to join them, again, you can go to patreon.com slash tech won't save us and help us hit that goal so I can bring on a producer for the show. Now, with that introduction out of the way, this week's guests are Justine Medina and Karen Ponce. Justine is a packer at Amazon's JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, where she has worked since September, and she is on the organizing committee of the Amazon Labor Union. And Karen is a stower at the JFK8 warehouse, where she has worked for about a year, and she is the interim secretary of the Amazon Labor Union. Now, if that sounds familiar to you, it is because they are part of the warehouse that successfully won their union vote last week, the first time in the United States that an Amazon facility has

voted to unionize. It is an incredible achievement and an incredibly inspiring one. And as we have seen with Starbucks locations over the past few months, where one unionization campaign that was successful has now led to a whole wave of union drives and organizing at Starbucks around the United States. Hopefully, this means that the same is now coming for Amazon. If one warehouse can do it, why can't a ton of other ones? And let's be clear, not just in the United States, as Justine and Karen make clear in this interview, but around the world as well. After we recorded, Chris Smalls, who is the interim president of the Amazon Labor Union, said that since the vote, the ALU had been contacted by workers in over 50 buildings

nationwide. And that didn't include more buildings overseas. And that number was obviously increasing, I'm sure, by the hour. So it's an exciting time. And I was very happy to speak with Justine and Karen about their experiences at Amazon, their experiences with this organizing campaign, and where they think that things are going next. It's a fantastic interview and I hope that you enjoy it. And just a final reminder that if you want to help us hit our campaign goal of getting 100 new supporters this month, you can go to patreon.com slash techwonts save us to help me keep making the show, having these fantastic conversations and ensuring that they're free for everybody.

So anyone can listen regardless of how much money they make or whether they are a supporter. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Justine, welcome to tech won't save us. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. And Karen, welcome to the show. Thank you. I'm excited to be here. I'm really excited to speak to you both. You know, you're both organizers with the Amazon Labor Union, which had a fantastic success last week with a successful union vote at the JFK8 Amazon warehouse in Staten Island. 2,654 votes in favor against 2,131 votes against. So, you know, this is the first successful union vote at an Amazon facility in the United States, which is a huge achievement. A few days have passed now since winning that vote. So how are you both feeling?

I'm exuberant and very tired. It's very funny. I remember, and Karen, I don't know if you've had a sort of similar thought to this, but I remember thinking leading up to the election, I was like, oh, after we'll win, then I can sleep. And I don't know why I thought that, because I should have realized after we win, then there's so much more work. So I haven't really been sleeping. But it's amazing.

And I'm really excited for what comes next. I just want to say that I definitely am thankful that the hard work is paying off. I'm surrounded with a bunch of strong organizers. The pressure has definitely been real. And I'm just watching it all fall into place now. And that's just a very great example of how hard work pays off. And like Justine said, I don't think we're going to be sleeping. We definitely have work to do.

We're going to have to go into the collective bargaining next. And I know that everybody in Amazon is excited for what the union can bring in. Yeah. Amazon's excited for what the union can bring in. Yeah, you know, I think for those of us outside, we'll also be watching, you know, to see how that process unfolds and very much supporting you in doing that and, you know, sending you all the best that we can, you know, as much as we can provide, but obviously wish you the best in that process. And I'm sure we'll talk a little bit more about that later. Before we get into discussing the organizing campaign, I want to know a bit about what it was like working at Amazon,

because you're still both workers at the JFK8 facility. And, you know, we hear a lot of stories about what it's like on the floor of Amazon, but don't often get the opportunity to hear firsthand what it's actually like to work in that environment. So what's it like on the floor of one of these warehouses? When I first started, it didn't take long to realize that the work environment was toxic. And I immediately had issues with the bathroom. Remember, the facility is very big. Everything that I do every second is monitored by the system. So I got in trouble for taking too many bathroom breaks. I received my write-up on the first week. And I already knew that this was going to be a problem.

So after that first time, not every time I go to the bathroom, I run. Or I try to consume less beverages, which is also dangerous. Because remember, you're working at a fast pace. For 12 hours, it's very hot in there no air conditioner just um fans recycling hot dusty air so i'm definitely a little more concerned as we're getting closer to the summer because it's a lot more dangerous in the summertime um the building is full of machines so you can only imagine how hot it gets in there what else um i noticed that i don't see the same people all the time so that was definitely one of like we say it's hard to build

like solidarity with workers because we won't you'll meet them now and then you'll find out that they got fired and it's a very common issue i noticed how we see ambulances outside all the time it's very normalized justine had mentioned once like how we're away from like sunlight and like windows. So then I'm like, hey, so this is like a prison basically because it's like you're isolated in your station away from windows. And even now, like they want to go back to pre-COVID policies such as making us put our cell phones in a locker, which I think is horrible. So it's like you're away from sunlight. You're away from communication with your friends and family, and they want you glued to your station. So it's like, what's going on? Like, where's the human? So yeah, definitely.

I feel like they have the power to change many things, but they won't do it. So that's why I feel like the pressure from the union will get things done. Yeah. I feel like the pressure from the union will get things done. Yeah, if I could just jump in before you respond, Justine, it's shocking to hear that there's still no air conditioning when I remember this was a scandal like a decade ago, that Amazon warehouses didn't have air conditioning, didn't have proper air conditioning, you know, had ambulances and medical teams waiting outside for people to faint because it was getting so hot in the warehouses. And to hear that this is an issue that hasn't been addressed a decade later is absolutely shocking. And you know, you talk about the high turnover rate, which is, you know, something that there's been more and more attention on. Yeah, it's horrible to hear

that. Justine, go ahead. Yeah, there is no air conditioning. There are people fainting all the time. There are ambulances every day. And what's more is there are many, many, many more injuries that don't get addressed via the ambulance or via the internal EMTs that Amazon has. and it's horrible. I mean, a few weeks ago in my department, a woman passed out and it took 10 minutes for the EMTs to show up to get her in a wheelchair. And while we were waiting around, the managers were making all of the workers around her continue working and go back to work. And this happens all the time if there are injuries or if there are physical fights that break out. And that happens sometimes too, because the workers are under so much stress. And as Karen said, it's such a toxic work environment that it leads to these sort of psychological breakdowns that happen, unfortunately. And

no one feels like they can step in to deescalate because they have to keep working because they literally do. Because if you step in to help someone else at this work environment, you could lose your job, you'd get fired. One thing that Karen didn't mention, which is also really important, in addition to everything she said, is the constant surveillance, which also makes it feel like a prison. There are security cameras every few feet. There are security guards when you walk in. There's the security screening you have to go through. And then our stations are monitoring where we're at at all times. And I mean, this is tech won't save us, right? Amazon is a tech company. So of course,

they're testing out all of their surveillance at all times. I wouldn't be surprised if they're trying to monitor us through our cell phones right now. And one thing, you might have seen this in the news, but Amazon is trying to implement a new internal messaging board. Right now we have the voices of the associates boards, which are these sort of internal posting boards, but I think they're trying to implement a new thing. And on that messaging board, they're planning to ban a number of words that talk about these conditions. So you can't say the words prison, robots, unfair, slave labor, plantation, harassment, representation, living wage, this intense monitoring of what you're doing, what you're saying, how you're interacting at all times is incredibly difficult to describe unless you go through it and live it. Yeah. When you say that, it brings to mind

a friend of the show, Ed Ongwezo Jr., who's a journalist at Vice, tweeted yesterday that my internal Amazon memo to ban the word plantation in the new worker chat is raising a lot of questions answered by my internal Amazon memo to ban the word plantation. You know, if they're trying to stop you making that comparison, I think that says something about the work environment at Amazon. But I appreciate you both telling us a bit about what it's actually like on the floor there. And, you know, another thing that comes to mind, just thinking, Karen, about what you said about them not allowing you to have their phones, thinking about what happened a few months ago with the tornado collapsing the Amazon facility and how Amazon was not providing the information to the workers about what was actually happening around them. Like it seems more important than ever that workers should have their phones on them because

they can't trust what they're actually going to get from Amazon and if they're going to be honest with them. So I want to shift to talking about the campaign a bit. And I feel like the story for a lot of people, how it's framed in the media begins in March of 2020 when the COVID pandemic is really hitting the United States. There are issues with the COVID measures that Amazon is taking and workers at the JFK facility are organizing to get Amazon to bring in stricter policies to keep workers safe. And Amazon fires Chris Smalls at that time. And then the higher ups at Amazon coordinate a campaign to try to smear him as not smart or

articulate, we can very clearly see how wrong they were about trying to do that. Can you position that event for us? Was much organizing happening before then? Or did that really serve as a galvanizing moment, both seeing what Amazon was willing to do, but then also seeing like how it would target a worker in this really specific way. I came into Amazon a little bit after that happened. I know that he let the walk out, you know, because Amazon wasn't handling COVID well, like there was no gloves, no hand sanitizer and things like that. So I know that he walked out, got fired. And I feel like Amazon, you know, from the very very beginning they probably thought like ah you know like he's not smart or articulate and then later fast forward they're like oh they're

a bunch of thugs you know and then oh they bring in the union busters so I feel like they definitely tried everything and they underestimated us for sure and they definitely attacked the organizers in any way possible but either by spreading misinformation, lies, even arresting the worker organizers. So that's why I feel like despite everything, I'm very proud of the ALU for showing Amazon, you know, like that they can't interfere with worker solidarity. Yeah, I think Jeff Bezos is not smart or articulate. You know, I think this sort of proves that. No, but it is interesting and funny how I think the racism and classism blinded Amazon executives. You know, it caused them to underestimate their enemy,

and I think it's still causing them to underestimate us. They treat the workers at the warehouse like we're idiots and like they're stupid, just constantly, a sort of condescending tone in interacting with us. And yeah, they definitely underestimated Chris, who's clearly one of the best strategic minds of the 21st century. And I know there had been some organizing attempts at Amazon through IWW members

trying to get jobs there in the past and other people, but it never really took off. A lot of workers who were around when that was happening never even interacted with them, which is not that strange considering how many people worked there. Derek and Gerald and Jay were able to figure out how to actually reach everyone and get it to take off in a way that had been unprecedented. And so I want to talk about that shift, right? Because we go from that moment where Amazon is trying to smear Chris Smalls in this way to the formation of the Amazon labor union sometime after. So how did that organizing committee come to form? How did the Amazon labor union come to get formed? And then how did you both get involved with it? After the walkout, when Chris was fired and Jared was fired and Jay was suspended,

they and a few other workers decided to form the Congress of Essential Workers, the TCOEW, which was a solidarity group made up of Amazon workers and other kinds of workers who wanted to protest Amazon and other companies for better working conditions, particularly during the pandemic. Everyone was being called an essential worker, but being treated like garbage. And through this, they started traveling the country, meeting up with workers around the country, going to different Amazon facilities. They found out what was going on in Bessemer. They went down there to support. And through all of that activity, they started thinking about the idea of forming a union. And then another worker, Connor Spence, who had previously been at a warehouse in New Jersey, and then saw what was going on and decided to get a job at JFK8 to be closer to what

Chris was doing, met up with the crew, got involved with TCOEW and said, hey, why don't we form our own union? So that's the short version. And of course, Chris has mentioned a lot of this before and also said how the idea where Jeff Bezos as part of the smear said to make Chris the face of the unionization movement. And that just sort of egged Chris on and said, yeah, you know what, why not? Why don't we do that? And the reason that workers decided to create a new union is because they'd been sort of waiting for another union to come in and show their chops and help lead the way. And then they realized that wasn't going to happen. So why not just start their own? They were workers. They had dozens and dozens of combined

years of experience dealing with Amazon and being workers at Amazon. So why not take their lives into their own hands and make it happen? Just picking up from where Justine left off. So I'm one of the newer members in the Amazon Labor Union. The ALU started in April 20th, 2021. And I didn't come over until November because I didn't have any prior experience to unions. I wasn't too sure what was going on. I only knew Amazon side of the story. However, after collecting some questions and concerns from my friends and I, I wrote them down such as, who are you? What are union dues? Will my vote be anonymous? Can I get fired for engaging with you? Simple things that i know like

many other people also have the same concerns so i asked and connor actually gave me a sense of security and he knew what he was talking about and they convinced me to be an organizer as well it's been a learning by doing process justine is definitely one of my favorite organizers. She has experience. She even reached out to me personally and told me like which committee committee I would like to be a part of. So we have like the ALU music collective, which is one of my favorites. She's taught me lots of union songs. And I feel like that definitely helps like while I'm at work, because I'll just pop like my AirPods and like, keep the momentum going, you know, like, okay, you know, I'm working, but you know, we have a union coming soon. I also try to educate myself a little bit more on unions, like by going on Audible and just simply typing the word union.

And then a book by Jane McAvely came up. I finished it very quickly. And I feel like this has been one of the best decisions I've made for myself. It's very rewarding in the sense of, you know, seeing it all come together and giving hope for the future for a better tomorrow at the workplace. And knowing that we did that for ourselves. I love that. That's so fantastic to hear. Justine, did you want to add something? Thank you, Karen. That's very sweet. I just wanted to say how I got involved. So I had seen the story of Chris's walkout, like many people had, but I actually wasn't aware that the Amazon

Labor Union had been started until a few months after it was. So I am a salt. So I was recruited by one of the members of the ALU organizing committee to get a job at Amazon to support the unionization drive. And that initial contact happened in July. One of the work organizers, Maddie Wesley, who's one of the lead organizers at LDJ5, ran into some comrades of mine who are also members of the Young Communist League, of which I'm a member, at a Medicare for All rally. And they started talking about the importance of unionizing Amazon and organizing in Amazon in order to organize workers in the 21st century. And Maddie got the idea to reach out to the Communist Party and see if any of us would

be interested in getting jobs there to help with the help the unionization effort. And I said yes. And it took me a little while to get started because I had to figure out logistics of finding a place to be able to crash on Staten Island and handle a couple of things. But then I got a job there in September and it changed my life forever. That's awesome. Thank you both for sharing those experiences and giving us that history of how things came to be.

I really appreciate it. And it's just great to hear your entry into it. Karen, your story of not really being involved in unions and how you came to learn about it, to be inspired by it. It's just so fantastic. And I'm sure that there are so many other workers in that same position as well as you were. And based on what both of you were saying, I think that there are a lot of things that I could dig down on. I was wondering, Justine, in a piece you wrote for Labor Notes, you wrote about the importance of learning from the industrial workers of the world, the history of the building of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, reading William Foster's

organizing methods in the steel industry. How was that important to organizing this worker-led union campaign? Because as you say, you know, you formed a new union instead of working with one of the existing unions and bringing those in. Yeah. So I would say if folks aren't familiar with William Z. Foster, he was one of the most important labor organizers of the 20th century, certainly in the United States. He was a very important member of the IWW. And then he went on to join the Communist Party to help build the AFL and also the CIO and to build up the party, eventually helped run it. Very important man. But he wrote a lot about organizing unions and he stressed the importance of making sure as many workers themselves, rank and file workers, were involved in serious ways on the worker

committees and in planning the organization that you're going to do. We thought it was really important to look back at the history of building the industrial unions in the 20s and 30s, because Amazon is the industrial production line of the 21st century. And we also thought it was important to study that time, because we haven't seen radical, huge, militant unions since that time, really. You know, I mean, since the second Red Scare and the unions started to be broken up, and the communists and socialists and anyone slightly associated with them were all kicked out of the unions. It's been a struggle in the United States to keep the unions dedicated to the workers. And we wanted to make sure that the Amazon Labor Union was dedicated to the workers. So we had to look back at the blueprint of how it was done and see how we could apply it to now to make it happen.

Some of my favorite things from organizing because we've done a lot of different strategies, one being serving food in the cafeteria to our co workers. I feel like that definitely made people happy being that Amazon has horrible lunch. Nobody wants to eat Hot Pockets. So you know, like just serving real meals, roastery chicken with rice and salad, definitely put a smile on everybody's face. It set the vibes. We passed out vote yes lanyards. And just basically having our presence in the break room showed like our coworkers, like how dedicated we are and telling them that we're here on our day off, specifically just to come and chat with them and inform them a little bit more about the union and to answer their questions. And definitely for some people, it took multiple conversations, but we developed friendships along the way. Another strategy that we used is phone banking. I think that was great because it's like at work, maybe some people are afraid to even speak to us because they may not know that, you know, like they're protected under the NLRA. They know that Amazon doesn't like this. So they're afraid of retaliation. But I feel like the phone bank gave people privacy to speak from their home

three to five minutes, just very quickly, you know, answer their questions and reminding them, hey, like, why don't you come by and talk to us in the break room? We were able to get through thousands of people. And I feel like, in my opinion, in part, I think that's why we got thousands of voter support. The phone backing was a huge part of it, I think. Awesome. I want to pick up on what you were saying there about the importance of conversations, right? The conversations with the other workers that you were talking to, because it was something that I saw Angelica Maldonado talk about in Jacobin as well. And Karen, you said that you weren't sure in the beginning, you know, you had no experience in a union. And so you took your questions to one of your co-workers to actually ask them your questions to get those answers. And then I'm sure

that you ended up having those conversations yourself with other workers at your workplace. What was the importance of actually making those connections and actually having, you know, a bunch of workers within the facility who people were familiar with, who they could talk to and come to and say, you know, I'm hearing this from Amazon, I've heard this about unions. What's the truth to this? What are you proposing as part of the Amazon labor union? Definitely one of the things that we noticed over the months was that as Amazon kept spreading anti-union propaganda, we would always have to be on top of it and debunk their lies. For instance, number one, they attempted calling us third party. And we often spoke out about it

in the captive audience meetings, in general, just reminding everybody, like, no, this is a worker-led movement. This is not a third party, if anything. The union busters are a third party because they're just here to brainwash you. And after the election, they're going to leave. I feel like definitely after we told everybody how much they're earning per week just to dismantle our efforts, that was very alarming to everyone. And that kind of woke them up. And they were like, OK, yeah, we can't trust those folks. We were constantly on debunking Amazon's lies, is what I noticed. And then like, once people realize like that, we're telling the truth,

they began noticing like, the extreme extent that Amazon is willing to go to attack their own workers. I feel like everything definitely backfired on them. Yeah, I would echo all of that. And then I would just say the conversations were why we won, you know, not just on the phone, but really, we were inside the warehouse 24 seven, for months and months and months and months and months, really, we recruited organizers on every shift in order to be talking with people at all times. And then in the lead up to the election, once we started posting up, not just outside the warehouse with the table, but posting up in the break rooms inside, we started setting ourselves on shifts so that we would be there 24 seven.

So on our days off, on our nights off, we would be in there, we would be in there on our breaks, and we would make sure that we could always talk to someone. And I think that was critical because then people knew from the phone calls, we would remind them, we have people in the break rooms, you can go talk to them. We would remind people in the captive audiences, if you want to learn our side, come talk to us. We're in the break room. And people just knew we were there.

People would come looking for us. So I think that was very important to the success of our win. I think that's going to be very important to LDJ5 and any other Amazon union effort. No, that's fantastic to hear. And it makes complete sense, right? When you're talking to your co workers, they're people you're familiar with, they're people that you know, you can trust them more than some people who are being paid a ridiculous amount of money to come in from Amazon to give you all these like bullshit anti union talking points. So yeah,

that makes total sense. Justine, you talked about how you were a salt at Amazon. I remember seeing a number of articles in like early 2020 saying, you know, people need to go salt Amazon to help with the unionization. What does it mean to be a salt and how did that contribute to the unionization effort? A salt is someone that gets a job at a shop in order to try to help unionize it. Sometimes I forget people don't know that word. I really need to figure out the etymology of salt because it is a bit of a non-intuitive word because it doesn't sound like a good thing necessarily.

But yeah, I mean, I thought salting was key to helping with this. The one thing I would say, though, that I think is very important that I've been reminding everyone, and which I pointed out in the labor notes piece, is if you are a salt, you have to remember that you are supporting, that you are going in there to follow the lead of the workers that have been around longer than you. You can't go in thinking that you're going to run the show and tell people what to do because that's just not how it works. And that's not going to be successful ultimately. I think that that mindset is very important to it. And in becoming a salt, it's also not a short-term commitment.

I'm planning to work at Amazon for the rest of my 30s at least, the rest of my life if I can. I mean, however long it takes until we succeed at winning worker democracy across Amazon. So I encourage everyone who has the ability to do that to do it. But I also encourage people to just not take it lightly. It's a big responsibility. And it's not a game, you're helping the workers. It definitely has been very committing. I've been with the ALU for six months. We've had no days off. Even if we're home, we're reaching out to our co-workers, listening to their stories, trying to help them the best way that we can, whether it's accompanying them to HR or getting them in contact with a lawyer. We're always being very active. I guess it's like Justine said, you know, you were

hoping that you'd be able to sleep now, but maybe not, I guess. That's great to hear. And it's great to hear both of your experiences. And Justine, I think the point that you make about being a salt, but being there to support the workers, the workers who are already doing the work is so important, right? You're not coming in to impose your idea of how this is all going to work. It needs to be something that's organic, that is already building, that you come in to help move along even further, to help, you know, reach that goal of what you have achieved, you being the collective you with this union vote. One of the things that stood out to me in watching what was going on at JFK8 and what was happening with the Amazon labor union is that I remember, you know, when the Bessemer campaign was happening, there was a lot of media attention on it, maybe an overwhelming

amount, you know, a lot of politicians who were going down there to, to visit it, to speak out in favor. And I feel like there was less of a media focus on what was happening with your warehouse in Staten Island. And I feel like I saw in one of the interviews or articles that I saw that one of the organizers said there was really a focus on connecting with workers rather than having like a media spectacle around it. Can you talk a bit about the role that the media played and how you thought about that in this campaign? I definitely think that it's important that we're we were more focused on the workers. We did have some media, even independent media like status quo. And I mean, we didn't really have like lots of support from politicians in the beginning. And

I feel like, well, my assumption is like, maybe because we are an independent union, rather than an established union, perhaps maybe they didn't have faith in us, which would be sad. But anyways, that's just my assumption. But yeah, I feel like we proved to everyone, politicians, Jeff Bezos, that, you know, all these workers with little resources, no support, they did it. And then, of course, you know, some of us predicted that everybody would come in the end, which is what we're seeing. We tried to use media as much as we could, but media is just one component of a successful organizational strategy because the most important thing is to reach the workers. So media games are mostly to gain public support and reach the outside, not necessarily the workers. And we did what we could to bring the media into the workers. But the most important thing for reaching the workers is having those one-on-one conversations and being at work and those workers seeing you work hard and just building those bonds with them. And that's something that Chris and Derek and the others who started ALU learned from watching Bessemer is that they could see that there was this huge media game on the outside,

but then when they went down there themselves to support, the first time around there wasn't a very active workers committee. There wasn't necessarily a huge focus on having those one-on-one conversations because there was this thinking that doing the media would reach people. And I think the Bessemer organizers this time around really learned from that as well. You know, I think that's why it was a lot closer. They had a lot more workers involved. We understand that media can be important. We've used it to our advantage as much as we could. We welcome the sort of more high profile support we're getting now because we need everyone helping us who can. But it's ultimately about the workers. And when you lose sight of that, then you ultimately start to lose. I think that's a great point. And I think what you're saying about learning the lessons, right, learning the lessons of the first best summer campaign. And I'm sure that people, you know, the next people who are trying to organize at their Amazon warehouses are also

going to look to your campaign and say, Okay, what did they do? Right? What can we improve on? You know, I think it's natural just building in that way. Right. So, yeah, I that makes complete sense. Now, before we shift to talking about what comes next, I wanted to ask, is there anything that I didn't ask about or that we missed in talking about the campaign that you think is important to emphasize? Maybe we can just bring up a little bit about how it's like this thing was saying Amazon treats their workers like, you you know like we're dumb I remember like in the captive audience meetings they slowed down their tone and their their pace

and speaking to us they would say we are asking you to vote no you know as if we're children and we're just gonna do as they say but that's why I'm definitely very proud of JFK for knowing better than that. And yeah, I'm excited to see step two. I would just additionally add sort of like how we did it. In addition to talking to workers, we got ourselves organized internally more and more over time. We had weekly union meetings. By the end, it was bi-weekly. The organizing committee in intense communication with each other all the time via texting and phone calls and in-person meetings

and Zoom meetings were more structured and more organized than various professional non-profits or unions or other political organizations I've been a part of, which is very funny because we actually joke that we're disorganized labor because we're so disorganized. But no, leaning in on the structure was important and is a big part of how we won. What you've both just described clearly shows the divide, right? Amazon treating you like your children. And then at the same time, you know, you're organizing this union campaign that is winning the first union vote at an Amazon facility in the United States. So it really shows how wrong Amazon is in how it views and approaches the workers at its facilities. So I did want to shift to talking about what comes next, right? So I guess we'll start with JFK8, you know, with the

warehouse where you've had this successful union vote. The vote has been done. That is one step, one very, very important step. But now the next step, as you said, is, you know, the contract negotiations, trying to get a union contract. I saw that there was a letter sent, I believe it was at the end of last week, to suggest dates to start meeting with Amazon for early May. What are you expecting in that contract

negotiation process? What will you be pushing for? And I'm sure that you're expecting Amazon to be not a partner that's going to engage willingly. So I feel like we've just been waiting for this moment to start negotiating with them. The workers helped us a lot with that. Just the conversations asking them, well, if you had a union, what would you like to see with the union? What would you like to improve in your workplace? A lot of the issues that came up was limited break time. We have right now two 15-minute breaks and one 45-minute lunch. We would like to see more time to actually sit down and take a break. We would like job security picking up from the high turnover rate. We want people to feel safe and have stable jobs. We want them to have union representation at any disciplinary meetings to make sure that Amazon's not firing over nonsense. These are just some of the things I know that we have eight immediate demands, but just at the top of my head, I know those are like two big ones. I mean, we've been also thinking about a shuttle bus service because being that a lot of their

workers come from the Bronx, Brooklyn, and they're traveling two and a half to three and a half hours. So hopefully that's one of the things that the union can push for. Amazon tends to say that, you know, like these are the things that the ALU wants or like that we're going to be speaking for others. But it's like, no, we gathered this information from conversations with the workers. We've collected surveys and we're basically going based off of what the workers want the most, like the priority for them. Higher pay is definitely, I think, number one. So we've been saying that we're going to fight for $30 an hour, which might be a little optimistic. We do make $18 to $20 an hour now, but being that we live in New York, it sounds like a lot, but it's not because our rents are $1,500 to $2,000 a month.

Yeah, but I mean, I'm definitely excited to see the community helping us and reaching out and they're willing to help us in these next steps. I can put a link in the show notes to the eight demands that you have so that people can check those out. But go ahead, Justine. Thank you. Yeah, I was just going to say Karen's exactly right. We're building our demands from these conversations with workers. And in addition to building off of those conversations, now we're building our department committees to get more representation. We're starting to elect stewards and we're building the bargaining committee. So we've sent out emails to the entire workforce at Amazon, JFK8, to submit nominations for the stewards committee, for the bargaining committee. And we're planning to have elections

very soon. We've, like I mentioned, been having meetings for months and they're pretty open, but we expect and hope an influx of workers are going to start coming to these meetings to have a more vibrant participatory workplace democracy. We're building a union. Amazon's already pushing back. They're saying they don't want to certify. It looks like they're hilariously planning to sue the National Labor Relations Board over this because they can't go after us. So they're saying the NLRB acted inappropriately, which is absurd. And I don't think that will go very well for them. But we're going to move forward as a union because we are a union and we're going to pressure them to give us what we want. And if not,

we're going to organize actions on the shop floor to bring even more pressure. And we're going to win better conditions for ourselves. So it feels good. It really shows how desperate Amazon is with the tactics that they're trying to use, potentially suing the NLRB. And I think it's great that the Amazon Labor Union is out in front, is the one sending the letter saying, okay, here are proposed dates. When are we going to meet? Really trying to push them. So I think that's fantastic. And now there has been this successful vote at JFK 8, but another Amazon facility in Staten Island, LDJ 5, is also voting later this month. You know,

I'm sure that you've been organizing there as well. The Amazon Labor Union has. What do you think that this successful vote means for the campaign at that facility? We're hoping to have that domino effect. We've already been talking to LDJ 5 previously, and we're just to have that domino effect we've already been talking to ldj5 previously and we're just picking that up now we have one month left i'm hoping that the same thing will happen that people will see how successful we were and that we beat all the odds you know and they're also a smaller facility in regards to like population so yeah i'm pretty optimistic for the turnout in LDJ 5. Yeah, we're doing the same thing there. We're organizing workers on the organizing committee to occupy the break rooms inside 24-7.

We're talking to workers outside the building. We're going to be making phone calls. And yeah, then we're going to win and then move on to the next. Absolutely. And, you know, speaking about the next, everyone, or at least, you know, the type of people who'd be listening to this podcast, I think have been paying attention to how in recent months, you know, there's just been a wave of Starbucks stores, organizing, unionizing, after, you know, the first domino fell. And then there was just this wave across the United States, right? And so I saw that ALU Vice President Derek Palmer told More Perfect US that ALU has workers

ready in 18 other states to start organizing at their facilities. So what might this mean for the broader movement to unionize Amazon? There is opportunities in the ALU for everyone. So I think every worker should definitely get involved in any extent that they could so that they can feel more involved because the union is us. We have workers, as Derek said, in 18 states, even more now, reaching out. We have Amazon workers across the world reaching out. In Milan, in Bangladesh, in England, everywhere everywhere, all over the world, and also unions

all over the world. After this, Karen's talking with union secretary in Ecuador. We're really building an international movement because that international movement is Amazon workers. I mean, even at our own warehouse, right? There's a lot of immigrant workers. And I think that's the case at Amazon fulfillment centers and warehouses and factories around the world is that it's a very, it's very international in nature. So you want to make sure you're being international in nature and in the union efforts, you know, whether it's through ALU or connecting with other unions as well, we all need to be working together and we're going to be doing that. It's, yeah, worldwide movement. That solidarity is fantastic. You know, absolutely what's necessary to bring that fight to Amazon

beyond the United States as well. And I certainly hope that we see some of that up here in Canada as well. I know that things are starting and hopefully this just helps to propel it forward. I have really enjoyed speaking to you both today, hearing your experiences. And I just want to end with one final question. Obviously, most of the listeners of this podcast won't be Amazon workers themselves. Is there a way for people who are not Amazon workers to support the ALU or the broader movement that is working to organize and unionize Amazon? Please give us money. Sorry, that's very blunt, but it's true, right? So we will be seeking voluntary dues, most likely donations from our own membership, but we won't be charging dues

until we win a contract. And we need money to be able to be successful in fighting back against Amazon and to be able to spread. So I'd say monetary support is crucial and critical right now. And then as we see new ALU chapters pop up across the country, reach out to us and ask how you can best provide community support in your area. And I can put the GoFundMe link in the show notes as well. Go ahead, Karen. I was just going to say that it's called the Amazon Labor Union Solidarity Fund on GoFundMe. But also aside from that, people can come out to our facilities wherever we're organizing and help us distribute literature, flyers. Maybe if they're already union members, they can help us spread the good word about how a union has benefited their life.

People can visit the amazonlaborunion.org and sign up to help us phone bank. Yeah, there's many ways to get involved and we appreciate it very much. I will echo that if people are able to, that they should do all those things to help you guys out. And as these campaigns come to their cities as well, to help there too.

Again, I thank you both so much for taking the time to speak with me. I congratulate you again on this fantastic win, on this really inspiring win and this inspiring campaign. And I'm very much looking forward to seeing what comes next. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Thank you so much. Justine Medina is a packer at the JFK8 warehouse and is on the organizing committee of the Amazon Labor Union. And Karen Ponce is a stower at the JFK8 warehouse and the interim secretary of the Amazon Labor Union. You can follow Justine on Twitter at at JNMedina8989. And you can follow Karen at at Karen with three N's underscore 928. You can follow me at at Paris Marks. And you can follow the show at at Tech Won't Save Us. Tech Won't Save Us is part of the Harbinger Media Network. And you can find out more about that at harbingermedianetwork.com.

And if you want to help us meet our goal this month, you can go to patreon.com slash techwontsaveus and become a supporter. Thanks for listening. Thank you.