Amazon Workers on Staten Island Vote to Unionize

[RandySF]

“Workers at Amazon’s massive warehouse on Staten Island voted by a wide margin to form a union, in a stunning win for a campaign targeting the country’s second-largest employer and one of the biggest victories for organized labor in a generation,” the New York Times reports.

“No union victory is bigger than the first win in the United States at Amazon, which many union leaders regard as an existential threat to labor standards across the economy because it touches so many industries and frequently dominates them.”


https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/01/technology/amazon-union-staten-island.html

[brush]

1. Woohoo! On Staten Island even, the most conservative borough of NYC.

[lapucelle]

4. There are still lots of union families on SI...blue collar city workers...

cops, firemen, sanitation and transit workers.

[brush]

5. Good. They came through.

[PortTack]

2. Hopefully others will follow

[LetMyPeopleVote]

3. Meet Chris Smalls, the man who organized Amazon workers in New York

This man is amazing

Link to tweet

NEW YORK — Chris Smalls emerged from the office of a federal regulator on Friday, clad in a red sweatshirt and Yankees hat, and triumphantly popped a bottle of champagne.

The fired Amazon worker and former rapper had done what no one had yet managed in the United States: organized a group of Amazon warehouse workers to get a successful vote to unionize......

It was a momentous moment — not only had Amazon workers voted to join a union but also they voted to join the independent effort organized by Smalls. The Amazon Labor Union, which Smalls formed after he was fired from the company, is not backed by any national union with a depth of resources and connections. Instead, it’s made up almost entirely of current and former Amazon workers with an upstart mentality and an inside view into how Amazon operates.

“We had over 20 barbecues, giving out food every single week, every single day, whether it was pizza, chicken, pasta, home-cooked. We all contributed giving out books, literature, giving out free weed because it’s legal,” he said, laughing, on Friday outside the National Labor Relations Board office. “We did whatever it took to connect with those workers to make their daily lives a just a little bit easier, a little bit less stressful.”

This man did a great job in getting this union vote through